Watching Premier League football in Ireland in 2016 is more complicated than it needs to be, but over in Australia, a new deal for the Premier League rights has well and truly screwed fans all over the country.
Over here, in order to see every live Premier League game that is shown on TV you need to subscribe to both Sky Sports and the Setanta/BT Sport package, and you can do so in a few different ways with an option as to which service provider gives you the best deal.
Some see it as inconvenient and complicated, but it could be worse. It could be like it will be next year in Australia.
An internet service provider and mobile phone operator by the name of Optus has secured exclusive rights to Premier League coverage, something that previously belonged to FoxTel. Under the old regime it was a similar subscription package to what we have here, but now, Premier League football is available only to mobile and phone customers of Optus.
Imagine Vodafone (or any phone provider) buying the Premier League rights and holding the coverage hostage in order to make customers switch to their service. That is what is happening.
Not only are football fans expected to cancel their current contracts with their existing service providers, at their own expense, but they have to pay a monthly contract as well as a subscription to the Premier League coverage on top.
Journalist Paul Smith explained his tricky situation in an article on the subject for afr.co.au:
I am not an Optus customer for my home broadband (it only has roughly 20 per cent of the Australian market,) and I would have thrown my money at the company, if it had offered a season pass subscription.
Without changing home broadband supplier the only option is to sign up to a postpaid Optus mobile phone account (minimum $40 per month) and pay an additional $15 a month for the EPL coverage.
That's $55 per month, or $5 more than a Foxtel subscription for the basic package plus all of its sports channels. Hardly an option worth considering, let alone celebrating.
But wait, there's more. It turns out that Optus do not own their service equipment in many parts of Australia, and if you happen to be in an area where they rent the equipment from another company, you pay the extra cost.
What Optus does not tell customers in its initial marketing (it is of course buried deeper in the documents,) is that the listed prices are only relevant if you happen to live in an area where Optus owns all its own equipment. Randomly I don't.
Where I live it resells its broadband services off Telstra's equipment, because it hasn't built its own. It therefore costs Optus a bit more, so it passes that on to its customers to pay.
That's right, you pay more if you happen to live somewhere that Optus hasn't bothered to build its own infrastructure ... it punishes you with higher costs.
It is safe to say that the reaction down under has been hugely negative. Fans are totally perplexed at the situation and will likely turn to illegal online alternatives in their droves if the policy is not refined.
Many fans have tweeted Optus and explained that they will happily pay whatever they want for a standalone service, one which could potentially be an excellent viewing experience considering the ability to show every single match without region restrictions like we get here, but at the moment there appears to be no sign that a change is coming.
But what if the service is really great and worth all the hassle? Well, it probably won't be. Australian internet - as anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be matched with an Aussie while gaming online can tell you - isn't the best, and even streaming Netflix is too difficult to manage for a sizeable chunk of the population.
We spoke to Stephen Coorey, an Arsenal fan from Sydney, to get an idea as to what the was being offered in comparison to what has been taken away.
We don't know if it will be even watchable because Australian internet is so behind the times. They struggle with streaming Netflix.
Not to mention the fact that we are used to seeing our traditional pay TV Fox Sports provide us with a professional studio coverage with EPL panellists - Mark Bosnich and Robbie Slater - and they also had a red button we could press to watch any game live.
I'm not going to buy it, the telecommunications company is notoriously bad, and I would have to give up all the other sports I get on my current pay TV to switch. Not to mention paying more for either internet or my mobile phone plan. I'll just use a VPN and maybe subscribe to the Singapore EPL streaming thing that lots of British people do. Or resort to shitty pirated streams.
Shitty streams - the bane of every college student's existence - are no way to enjoy a game of football. Stephen's not alone in his views.
You know how excited Australia currently is for Leicester and the #EPL? Yeah. That's never happening again. Thanks to @Optus.
— Dean Bilton (@Dean_Bilton) May 4, 2016
BREAKING: Sunderland, Newcastle fans in Australia praying their club gets relegated from EPL so they don't have to deal with @optus.
— Athas Zafiris (@ArtSapphire) May 4, 2016
Great to see so much condemnation of the Optus farce, hopefully the same people stick to their guns and don't give them a cent.
— Neil Sherwin (@neilsherwin) May 4, 2016
If the price point wasn't bad enough, Optus openly admitting they can't guarantee HD coverage. Gets worse and worse. pic.twitter.com/JtZMIohbo4
— Laurence (@LaurenceRosen) May 5, 2016
This practice of taking something that there is obsessive demand for and holding it for ransom, forcing consumers to terminate existing contracts with other companies at their own cost and pay over the odds without any alternative is extremely worrying and we can only hope the plan fails dramatically.
Had the company decided to simply make their own subscription based service, they could have essentially offered Netflix for Premier League football, with all the games available to watch in a catalogue for their customers. Instead, they are forcing football fans to use their unreliable internet service watch games on laptops and iPads.
It remains to be seen if Premier League fans vote with their wallet and force the company to reconsider their strategy, but we seriously hope they do.
