Soccer rights own goal to iiNet

Soccer fans who subscribed to iiNet in hopes of watching the English Premier League had their hopes dashed today when the No.2 ISP told its followers that it was unable to secure next season's rights for broadcast on its unmetered Freezone service.

Comments posted by iiNet representative Geoff Searle to broadband community Whirlpool and on its Twitter account, were in response to a long thread from customers speculating on the licence decision.

"iiNet has been unable to secure the rights to the upcoming English Premier League 2010/2011 season from Freezone, so unfortunately football fanatics won't have quota free access to all the action," Searle posted.

"We know it's a little disappointing to some of our customers, but rest assured we're working hard to bring more great sporting action to Freezone."

The WA ISP's chief technology officer Greg Bader earlier wrote that Premier League rights were awarded every three years and it was "not an easy discussion" to secure them.

"Only place you will see live games on TV is via Foxtel (like last time), for the last couple of years we have had the web rights, so we had some live and on-demand games."

Expecting the worst, Whirlpool's iiNet subscribers said the loss "sucked" and left them "gutted".

"They are not the cheapest provider and don't offer the best allowances but the EPL was certainly a draw card for me," wrote a forum regular.

Another posted he was "bitterly disappointed" there were no more games this season: "I am gonna considerer my options now".

"This sux," wrote another. "Not a happy customer as EPL was one of the factors in my decision to sign up with iiNet."