Champions League Highlights (2/20)

For those of us in Canada, or at least English speaking Canada, we really get screwed on the TV broadcast coverage of Champions League. Not a single game from the first leg of the first knockout round was televised live yesterday. The only way to see it on your regular TV was if you are a subscriber to Le Réseau des sports (RDS), a French sports channel. This is a specialty channel requiring additional subscription to my already excessively bloated cable bill, to watch the game in French. Not exactly my cup of tea.

Now, I did find a legal, online option which is paying $9.95 US linked through UEFA.com to pick one game on a pay-per-view basis. I decided to bite the bullet and watched the ManU-Lille game on my old desktop with 17″ CRT. Not exactly the same video quality of my 50″ Sony. Hmm… considering RDS is about $8 per month, I do see the odd decision here sacrificing video quality, for more money, to listen to English commentary instead of French. I’ll have to re-think my priorities on this one.

Great game, with exciting highlights and of course, lowlights with the confusion about Lille continuing the game after Ryan Giggs’ winning strike. Avoiding that subject here, who did my $9.95 go to? TSN Canada. Ugh. The same blokes who are airing The Scotties (huh? since when did this change?) Tournament of Hearts (a.k.a. curling) through the Champions League matches.

Sure, TSN did play a couple games on delay after midnight last night, but that hardly fits into the typical family-work-family-collapse daily schedule that most of us are on. It is what is, as they say. And what it is, is frustrating.

Checking today’s schedule TSN is playing Celtic-AC Milan at 1:00 pm. Yes, this game was played yesterday. Then more curling through the afternoon. There should be some sort of discount package if you buy multiple PPV games.

For those who don’t want to do the search on YouTube, here are some highlights from yesterday: