Live-streaming: will football fans continue to be more law abiding than music fans?

The compact disc was launched in 1982 and heralded a golden age of music industry profitability before extensions of the same digital revolution, in the form of file-sharing, began, in 1999, to undermine the very foundations of commercial mediation in recorded music. The parallels in English football run one decade behind, with subscription-based digital broadcasting of live matches kicking off in 1992. Much has been made of the successes and corruptions associated with the vast influx of revenues that have supposedly transformed English 'elite' football, but such discussions are premature at best. Ten years on from the advent of file-sharing in music, parallel technologies are emerging for the free transmission of live sporting events. This article suggests that the cultural differences that might have inhibited the uptake of such services amongst football fans, relative to music fans, have been eroded by the very hyper-commercialization of sport which digital media once helped to facilitate but which now threatens or promises to undermine.