“15 percent casino discount!” “20 percent bonus!” The ads pop up incessantly. Between happy women with hands full of cash, Lionel Messi and Virgil van Dijk smile at you, their effigies flashing like the buttons of a slot machine.
Click here! Click here!
Many laptops or phones will now issue a warning. This website doesn’t look very safe either. The advertisements of bookmakers and online casinos are so persistent that you could suspect with the naked eye what the consequences of a wrong click could be.
So they have to be careful, the Dutch football supporters who often visit this website at the weekend. Why are they taking the risk? Because this Turkish website has something else to offer besides advertisements. Something that is of great value to diehard supporters at a time when most of them still cannot go to the stadium. Live images. From their club.
“Here in the Netherlands you will get away with it if you are not for an Eredivisie club,” sighs Charles van Druten. He is a supporter of Roda JC. That club currently plays in the Eerste Divisie and is therefore rarely seen live on TV, unlike all Eredivisie clubs. “With a bit of luck you only see the goals.”
And so they came across this Turkish website in Roda circles. There, in between the encouragements to bet on football matches 24/7, dozens of live streams are offered at any time of the day. Also that of Roda JC. It’s not exactly HD quality, but despite the grainy pixels and lack of repetition and commentary, it’s an acceptable alternative for tens if not hundreds of fans.
Van Druten: “You shouldn’t be surprised if suddenly advertisements for imported brides appear next to the screen.”
One thing fans are wondering about. How does such a Turkish gambling site actually get these images? Why is such a stream available there and not in the Netherlands?
Image rights
All First Division image rights belong to ESPN. The sports channel broadcasts at least two live matches per round, as is contractually agreed. The highlights of the other eight are over. For example, in the switching program, whose formula is simple: goals, goals, goals. A feast for the neutral viewer in particular. And what about the supporters? He followed his club from the stadium.
Until the pandemic broke out. Then all the fans became dependent on the TV broadcasts. “We met them then,” says director Marc Boele of Coöperatie Eerste Divisie, in which all clubs are represented. “Together with ESPN, the KNVB, the TV production company, we have put together money to broadcast all matches live. That way everyone could follow their club.”
This collective arrangement has been in effect for three quarters of last season. After that, clubs could get their matches live on TV in another way: for a fee. Cost: 7,500 euros. For that amount, ESPN directly broadcasts a match from the Kitchen Champion Division. Especially large clubs such as NAC Breda and De Graafschap made use of this. “We receive a lot of unconditional support from supporters and sponsors. That is why we want to do as much as possible for them,” said NAC director Mattijs Manders at the time.
Clubs still have that option this season. According to director Boele of the Eerste Divisie, this is a “cost-effective construction”. For this 7,500 euros, two extra cameras will be used and personnel that will take care of the production on site. ESPN bears the costs of a commentator. ESPN often pays for the production costs of extra live duels. Boele: “That is when clubs are prepared to play in a different time slot where no other match is played, for example on Sunday evening at eight o’clock.”
Now that not all duels are shown live, fans of First Division clubs regularly grumble about ESPN’s choices. Some think that their club gets too little on TV. A tourist office fan tweeted in December that ESPN was broadcasting “just one game”. “Coincidentally again NAC because apparently someone has pulled the wallet for the third time.”
“While we as paying subscribers are continuously treated to all kinds of beautiful slogans,” says Roda supporter Charles van Druten. „’ESPN: for the fans. Always and everywhere’. Well, not so.”
Out of necessity, many Roda supporters watch the matches via foreign gambling sites. Who, for reasons unclear to them, do have live images. In most cases of the matches that are not broadcast live in the Netherlands.
Some club directors also seem to know nothing about this. “Don’t tell me anything,” one of them replies about live images on a Turkish site. Another suggests that the registration be plucked out of thin air. In other words, those streams could be illegal.
Inquiring with ESPN shows that this could be possible, but that it could just as well be a legal stream. “Deals have been made with foreign gambling platforms,” said spokesman Maarten van Rooijen. “This concerns the international TV rights of the First Division.”
Abroad
Like the domestic television rights, these are ‘marketed’. The proceeds go to the big pile, which is the so-called TV money that the Eerste Divisie clubs distribute annually: approximately seven million euros.
Do they also watch the Eerste Divisie abroad? Not really. “Only in Indonesia have they been interested for a while in the Telstar and SC Cambuur matches,” says director Marc Boele. “That was because Stefano Lilipally played there, international from Indonesia.”
In reality, it is only gambling companies that are interested in matches from clubs such as Top Oss, MVV, FC Eindhoven and FC Dordrecht. “On a gambling site with live images, five times more is spent and people stay five times longer,” said sports marketer Chris Woerts, who buys broadcasting rights for Veronica, among other things.
ESPN spokesman Van Rooijen emphasizes that these are rough registrations. It’s the images ESPN creates for summaries, but unedited. The bit rate is lower, the pixels are grainier, and the window size should be no larger than one-third of the image.
Still, some supporters would love to watch those streams, they say. It’s better than nothing. So why can’t ESPN open registration for them, they wonder. “It is not a full-fledged product for live broadcasting on television,” says Van Rooijen. “We know the discussion and we are already broadcasting more matches than ever from the Kitchen Champion Division, but there is a lower limit.”