Club explain subscription service costs

Last updated : 16 August 2002 By Luke Thornhill
All Football League websites, barring newly promoted Boston United, are run by a company called Premium TV - jointly owned between media company NTL the Football League.

All these sites, barring Carlisle United who recently criticised the deal for charging fans for a service previously free, now offer a subscription service which includes match commentary and goal clips for any of the clubs as well as real time score updates and exclusive club specific audio or video updates.

Iron fans have been able to subscribe to the `IronWorld` service for just £24.99, with access lasting across the whole of the season.

A number of fans however have contacted Iron-Bru.net to question why the club charge for fans to listen to the commentary online - even though BBC Humberside receive no payment for doing so.

Which is why we spoke to David Beeby, who maintains the official website as well as the matchday programme for the football club

"The reason why the Club and Premium TV charge for the commentary is that we incur costs in producing it," explained Beeby

"While the BBC don't charge for their commentaries the cost of the equipment and expertise necessary to stream 72 commentaries to thousands of fans around the world is vast.

"We offered the commentary for free last season while we fine tuned the service but it has always been necessary for the FLPTV business, which the Scunthorpe United website is part of, to recoup some of these cost by charging for the service.

"At less than 50p a week we feel that the commentary and the other features in the World service represent good value for money."

Iron-Bru.net has to agree with David on this account, for fans who live out of the area and want to keep upto date with the side it is a bargain - although if you do not have a high speed broadband connection you will experience buffering moments on the commentary where it will cut out.

If you live within the receiving area of BBC Radio Humberside, we reccomend trying 95.9FM for away commentary first.

If you wish to subscribe to this service, you can do so by following the link below.

Subscribe to Ironworld