Arsenal 4-4 Spurs: The Devil Made Me Do It

Tottenham’s unbelievable 4-4 draw against Arsenal may end up being a modern day classic, one of the best Premier League games in several years. Problem is, if you’re like me and live in the United States, you probably missed it.

Living in the U.S, the only way to catch the game was to make a visit to your local sports pub to watch the game during work hours (the game kicked off at 4pm ET), or watch it or tape it on Setanta Sports. The issue is that unless you have satellite, the hard to find Verizon FIOS or are fortunate to have one of the few cable companies that carries the network, your options of watching the game were severely limited.

Let’s consider the options available to us if you missed the live game:

1. Setanta Sports – tape delay. Setanta isn’t available on cable in my area. My area can’t get Verizon FIOS, so my only options are DirecTV and DISH Network. But living in Florida, I refuse to get satellite because the reception keeps going out whenever we have thunderstorms (which are very prevalent).
2. Setanta Broadband. I’m a Setanta Broadband customer, but I wasn’t able to watch the game live because I was at work. I wanted to watch it on broadband later that night, but missed the delayed broadcast. Unfortunately the game isn’t yet available on demand through the service, and I won’t hang around waiting for them to add it because it’ll be too late.
3. Fox Soccer Broadband. Unfortunately, the game is not available through Fox’s service.

So far, I’m zero for three. The only realistic option is to download the game via BitTorrent and watch it at my leisure. Of course, it’s illegal, but what options do I have? Maybe I can try to watch the highlights of the game, but the only show where I can watch the highlights, legally, is Fox Soccer Report. I’m a big fan of Bobby McMahon, but I missed the show tonight and therefore lost the final opportunity to see the highlights.

Except, of course, I can go the illegal route and load up 101GreatGoals on my browser to see all of the goals.

It’s pretty sad when the most convenient options for watching Premier League matches or game highlights is to do it illegally. Let’s hope that when the next rights for the Premier League are sold that the internet rights for matches and highlights are totally repackaged where fans are able to get quality matches at convenient prices. I’d be willing to pay for the service. Would you?