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Football

04th Dec 2015

Fans outside the country will have to gamble online to access League of Ireland live streams

"Not completely free at the moment"

Darragh Murphy

You may have read about the FAI’s new deal whereby League of Ireland games will be streamed outside of Ireland from the start of next season.

News broke on Thursday that the association had signed a four-year partnership with TrackChamp which would see every 2016 SSE Airtricity League game available to watch online.

But we found out on Friday that, to watch the games, overseas fans would have to register with betting websites.

Cork players defend a free kick 17/8/2015

Speaking to GameOn on 2fm, Martin Füreder of TrackChamp explained how the system works.

“The first distribution will be through betting operators but we are also aiming at, and have already discussed with the league, additional platforms where people can access the streams.

A view of the game 28/8/2015

“But at the moment we are focused on getting everything delivered by March [the start of the 2016 season], putting our systems into arenas and setting everything up. After that we’ll look into the additional stuff that we are very keen to do with the league.

“What is industry standard is that you need to have an account registered and have some activity on the account. This maybe differs from website to website but to our knowledge our betting operators use it.

“So it’s not completely for free at the moment.”

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