posted on Friday, June 16, 2006 6:17 AM by Endie

World Cup Coverage

No, not a whine post about the BBC's match summarisers.  If you, like me, are spending time working in the office when you would rather be devouring the feast of football offered up by the likes of Argentina (currently boosting my world cup fantasy football team score with a thorough-going dismantling of Serbia-Montenegro), then I have found the very best of the live coverage sites.  It is at ESPN's Soccernet, and is a ridiculously competent piece of flash programming, with live coverage of plays, minute-delayed full commentary, indivudal stats on all players, a full game log... even pictures of the latest player to do something notable and flashing markers on a pitch to show ehere shots and goals were taken from.

You can get to it by going to their main page during matches and following the "Follow the Game - LIVE!" link (currently below the main headline picture, but it moves about).  It is also headed "gamecast" under any game showing on the front page.[+] -->

Comments

# re: World Cup Coverage

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:43 AM by MightyCornholio
From what I've read in a few news rags, thousands of World Cup viewers have been turning down the sound on BBC channels, or using an interactive button to switch to Radio 5 instead, while watching matches because they don't like the commentators. Apparently, one viewer, on the BBC Sport website, said that the BBC's commentary was so bad that it was "ruining people's enjoyment. The pub I was in actually turned the sound off on Saturday due to customer requests not to have to listen to [Ian] Wright and [Alan] Shearer boring for England."

# re: World Cup Coverage

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 6:07 PM by Endie
I've tried doing that before, most noticably when ITV got rugby coverage but Bill McClaren was still commentating on Five Live. I found it jarring: the sound wasn't just coming from the wrong place: it was actually *wrong*. The crowd noise is at a very different (far lower) level for the radio compared to the TV. It seemed just too odd...