Eurosport Player isn’t accepting new users unfortunately. Everyone has to move over to Discovery.
Over the years, I had become used to Eurosport not showing LIVE coverage of the North American GP's on their linear TV channels. But I was expecting that we would get LIVE linear TV coverage for the Italian GP this week. Alas, we aren't.
It really is getting bad for figure skating fans.
A few years ago, we thought the situation was bad, as Eurosport were only showing portions of the skating competitions on their linear TV channels due to other sports taking priority. But, we were actually well off compared to now, when no skating is being shown on the Eurosport linear channels at all.
Fortunately, my ESP Player subscription runs until after the Olympics finish. So, I don't have to worry for a while yet. But, I have no idea what happens when it does run out. One of the Dutch members told us in the Skate America TV thread that her ESP Player subscription runs out next Tuesday, so she has promised to tell us what they do with her.
If you don't hear from me again, I may have gone to prison. I sent a really angry tweet to infrontsports the Nordic company who have been blocking my LilahandLewis videos worldwide. Surely they have no right to do that if it's outside their territory?
About Infront. Firstly, they are actually a Swiss company. And, they are not a broadcaster; they are actually the promotor of the ISU events. You see, a couple of years ago, the ISU decided that to outsource the promotion of their events, and appointed Infront, who are also the promotors of most of the FIS events, to do it. So, they do have a right to take action against videos anywhere.
And bringing in an outside promotor is the reason why the coverage got messed up, because Infront decided to stop selling the rights on a pan-European basis, and instead sold them on a country-by-country basis, hoping to get in more money. But, hardly any national broadcasters were interested. And, the ISU ended up having to start streaming the events to plug the gaps, until Infront eventually did a deal with Eurosport. But, because some national broadcasters did buy the rights, Eurosport were not able to get the pan-European rights that they had before.
One of the areas that Eurosport do not have the figure skating rights is Scandinavia, where the Swedish company Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT) bought the rights. And from what I gather, NENT are very protective of their rights, and do go after videos on YouTube outside of the area in which they have rights. (Is is possible that you have got NENT mixed up with Infront?)
To make matters worse, NENT are in the process of expanding their streaming service, Viaplay, outside of Scandinavia. For example, they have recently bought a pile of high-profile broadcasting rights in the Netherlands, such as the Formula 1, Premier League football and Bundesliga football, in preparation for Viaplay's launch there in the new year. Viaplay already launched a few months ago in Poland and the Baltic States, and plans to launch in the UK later in 2022, and in Canada, Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2023.
I don't want to be a doom-monger, but it only looks like things are going to get worse.
Oh, how I miss the days when the EBU had pan-European rights to all the winter sports, and Eurosport (which the EBU owned at the time) and the national broadcasters that were EBU members (such as the BBC, ITV and RTÉ) could just select what they wanted to show.
CaroLiza_fan
UK will stay unblocked!!
I didn't realise there were Interclub competitions too (I really hate it when there are two different sets of Entries / Results pages for what is the same event!)
