interesting. if you want the NBl to be the strongest league it can, which means on court and off court, perhpos you actually want the nbl to take this path, to ensure what little value it has in current properties is appropriately protected.

There is a very easy way to stop/minimise the impact of these such sites.

Offer a GOOD online subscription viewer service. Leagues can do it and charge a small fee - you would be surprised how many people will pay.

NBA Broadband was great last season and very good value for money.

Bigpond used to and probably still does a good job with V8's.

But Dj, that does not stop the impact of leech sites. It actually builds them.

people pirate music all the time, they pirate software, they pirate tv shows.... they will pirate livestreaming where available whenver they can if it means they do not have to pay a subscription.

I agree NBA Broadband was good last year, and it was good value for money, but Australia remains one of the most expensive places on earth for bandwidth (isaac can probably affirm this). That makes it expensive to provide a value for money service that is not a loss leader.

Why the fuck would you pay to watch motor sports? If you give me ten bucks a month, I'll take you to the side of the freeway for half a day and you can go nuts.

Music to my ears about the motor racing TC2 - Anzac Highway for me this weekend to see all the cars go by - hell it is exciting!

HO - I'm a sceptic when it comes to the impact of pirating devaluing products. I suspect that most people who watch pirated movies, listen to pirated music and watch pirated live streaming wouldn't pay for the product if the pirated stuff wasn't available. Some people simply won't care enough to want to pay for it but become interested if it's free and easy to access. Others prefer the challenge of getting something for nothing - they're the guys who hid in the boot of their mates' cars to get into drive-ins for free, in the 60s and stand around outside a concert venue to hear the band, rather than paying to go inside.

If you provide a low cost, easily accessed service as DJ describes, most people will pay the small cost to get what they want, like most people pay to go to the movies and to rent DVDs.

I suspect the leech sites expose NBL to an audience that you would not otherwise have watching. If I'm even half right, that exposes sponsors and advertisers to a larger audience than solely having a paid service would. That increases the value of the product to those sponsors and advertisers.

Its an interetsing point of view Peter. If it was the case with music then there is no way the music industry would have been as vigorous as they have been in attempting to stamp out limewire, kazaa etc. In fact, that industry claims these sharing sites have cost them billions in revenue. Thats not small bikkies (if you believe them).

I think its very difficult to provide a low cost service within australia given the extraordinarily expensive cost of bandwidth here.

However, re value to sponsors etc because of leech sites I doubt it. the primary reason is because its not measureable. The league cannot say "we had 700 poeple on our official coverage and another 300 who take the coverage illegally... if you get what I mean.

Any league in the financial position of the NBL (a-league, NRL but perhaps not the AFL) cannot afford to have its properties devalued by this sort of activity.

Its a tremendous irony of this forum and TOF, that visitors clamour for coverage, lament the lack of power and strength and reach of the league, and then make comments like LC has in their opening post here, where they hope the league does not clamp down on sites and services that marginalise the possible future strength of the league. Go Figure!

The league is in the opposite of a virtuous circle. It has faced declining coverage and spectatorship since the mid nineties, and therefore has declining revenue and capacity.

I understand that the league's services generally are not great. I hope they can get video streaming up this year - and i hope they or the clubs can make some cash out of it...

... but as a fan, you cannot ask the league to provide this service, as many have here, and then advocate (hope) someone leeches the service which would put in jeopardy the very delivery of the service they want.

HO, interesting to hear that bandwith in Oz is so expensive. Is this due to lack of competition or something? Or is it the limitation of existing infrastructure? Or a bit of both?

I'd love to see the NBL eventually do something like NBA broadband, but I'm not holding my breath for it!

I'm one of those people who will use pirate streams where no other service is available, or if I don't really care enough to want to pay for something.

But I have to say, I really want to see internet broadcasting of sports succeed, so I jumped on the bandwagon early and am pretty glad I did, because NBA broadband is a pretty high quality product for a very reasonable price (especially compared to cable TV).

Now that good, convenient music purchasing services exist online, I find myself using those as well. Its great to be able to hear a song online and then go and fork out the money to get a good quality recording if you like it enough. So much better than the old model controlled by mega music corporations!

I access online TV feeds where it is not available also, hence my original post.

I don't subscribe to Foxtel as the cost is prohibitive and all I really want is AFL, cricket and of course basketball.

NBA Broadband is fantastic and well worth it. I am a big supporter of the FIBA TV initiative also. But there is nothing for AFL online (that I know of), and the cricket either. therefore when it is not live on FTA, if it is being streamed online somewhere I will check it out and watch.

Even with the Foxtel, many NBL games will not be broadcast at all. The NBL could do worse than explore an NBA Broadband type solution.

On the weekend I checked out Justin.TV for a few AFL games not being shown on TV live, and all the AFL feeds had been shut down.

LC, sorry, but I find it hilarious that with the amount of time AFL gets on FTA you can't get enough football! Oh for basketball to get one quarter of the coverage football gets!

Agree about Foxtel. Their problem is that they package things up so that you are forced to pay for a bunch of rubbish you don't want. If I could just choose the sports channels and maybe the History channel and a couple of intl news services (BBC/ CNN) for more like $30 a month, I'd have done it years ago.

I really hope someone runs the numbers on an internet NBL service and can find a way to make it commercially viable in the next few years. Most things I hear suggest they probably can't for the moment, but I live in hope!

Beantown - when your team is not being shown live and if I can get it online I will watch it via that medium!

Surely a big firm like SportingPulse who now supports not only BA but also FIBA with website and stats technology could come up with something. Even more so considering they are Australian based!