I've tried finding out information on this for months, and am coming up empty. Can someone enlighten me on why all of a sudden the Beeb is blocking all the SPL feeds outside the UK? Several years ago, you could listen to any match that BBC Scotland was broadcasting. Then, the Old Firm teams started to get proprietary about their matches and started charging subscription fees for them (is anything free on the 'Net anymore?). Fine with me, the teams I'm interested in are Hibs and Caley Thistle. Then, starting last season, more teams started having their matches blocked. It got to where an international listener only had one or two choices of which match to follow online. Now, this season, there are weeks when none of the matches are available, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It's hit or miss whether I can listen to anything on a given Saturday. And, of course, all the cup matches and internationals are now blocked also when they didn't use to be, and all midweek games are also blocked. There is no place I can find with information on what this is all about, and which will tell me when the SPL matches with my teams will be available for me to hear, or not. What the frag is going on????? Anyone in the know???? BTW, I don't get how football rights are handled anyway, I mean, what's the point of blocking a webcast? It's not like I'm going to fly to Scotland and attend the match in person each week. All this policy serves to do is drive away fans, when it seems to me what they should want is for their sport to be accessible to as many people as possible. Blocking webcasts is nothing but counterproductive. Who comes up with this stuff? I guess I might understand if they wanted to make a buck/quid or two and charge a subscription fee, but they're not even providing that option, they just block the feed. Makes no sense.
It all is terribly confusing. There are pay services available for all of this stuff now, but I used to like listening on the radio for free too. There was a while that you could backdoor the BBC site by setting your location to Scotland, but they seem to have patched that up. You could probably find a proxy to go through within the UK and then go to the BBC site, but we're getting above my level of computer literacy around there. You can pay Hibs for service, but I have a hard time doing that with as rarely as my schedule would permit using it.
Email the Beeb, there's a link on the Sportsound website and they're usually quite punctual to reply with queries. I don't know why they block to non-UK, though I think it's more to do with the TV license-fee or getting the broadcast rights.
Yeah, I'm having problems with it too now. Tried to listen to the Hibs Gretna game and the thing won't work anymore.
I've emailed the Beeb, twice. Their responses are both apologetic and cryptic. They're very sorry that I can't hear the matches but they won't say why, whether they're trying to correct it, whether they care. All they say is "for contractual reasons". I must confess that I don't get all the secrecy surrounding who has the rights to carry the matches. It's like cloak and dagger. If I had the money to buy satellite TV and pay-per-view I would, but I don't, so I guess I don't rate as a fan. Since when is football the sport of the rich? I thought that was horse racing. Football is the working man's game. Driving away fans is not going to get them revenue. I might not be able to buy tickets to the stadium but I certainly can buy merch. But who wants to wear a Caley Thistle strip on Saturday morning and have your wife laugh at you if you can't even cheer for your side? Disgusted here.
I agree with the tone of this thread - I too was annoyed that I became unable to follow the matches. I think what annoyed me most was that I started getting into listening to the Scotland internationals and then the access to those were taken away. I just couldn't figure out why - there is no other way I could access many of those matches, even if I wanted to pay for it. I wouldn't say that this was a driving force as to why my interest in Scottish football diminished, but it did contribute a little.