USA, the ‘Here and Now’. UK, the ‘There and Maybe Later’!

The Problem

For a sports fan such as myself, watching the game is almost as good as playing it. Ever since I started watching lacrosse, every other team sport seems really slow and nothing quite compares to it (with possibly the exception of ice hockey). And there’s a significant problem with this; watching good quality full length matches this side of the pond is really hard and expensive.

It isn’t impossible to watch lacrosse matches here but you will end up paying for it and, depending on the video quality, it’s a lucky dip as to if it is worth the money. Sky is one option in conjunction with ESPN which offer some coverage. From what I gather they show the odd MLL game and follow the NCAA season quite closely. As a student, this option is rather unobtainable much like the matches one desires. I know I would never be able to afford Sky on my maintenance loan.

Last year I decided to pay out for ESPN’s online and on demand option. For £99 a year (or £17.99  a month) you are granted access to the entire NCAA seasons games whenever you are free to watch them. Or so I thought.

Having paid out for the last month of the season, I assumed I would have access to all previous matches that I may or may not have watched, but come the end of the season ‘content is currently unavailable’. Also, as far as usability is concerned, the website was awful to navigate to a game. There were no quick search features or a decent scroll option. Since the package contains NCAA games from Basketball to American Football, from Softball to Baseball, trawling through the copious amounts of material was really tedious. More to the point, I don’t watch those sports so I end up paying for coverage of sports I don’t watch!

It seems over in the USA there are far more opportunities to obtain and watch lacrosse games. When clicking on links on the MLL website taking me to other sites where games were being shown, I would repeatedly get redirected to a UK version of the site offering me generic sports like football rather than the lacrosse I wanted to watch. Why isn’t this option available to all?

TLN do a brilliant job of bringing LXM Pro to the masses and now they are offering the up and coming NLL season too. It would be fantastic to see them growing and branching out to other tournaments like the Lake Placid Summit, which from what I read have some pretty explosive games.

The Future?

In reality, without a large injection of cash into the sport, it is unlikely that lacrosse will make it onto mainstream UK channels. I don’t know the exact dynamics of the system but the next step for game coverage, in my opinion, would be via the Internet. ESPN has proved it can work, albeit in rather primitive and rudimental form.

What I would love to see is a system more akin to the USA College game implemented here in the UK. I think with a little bit of effort and hard work it has great potential to be successful.

For example BUCS matches offer brilliantly tense games and with players coming and going through the universities, no two seasons will ever be the same. As part of a university community, there are likely to be a number of societies that are enthusiastic about TV and film, filming, recording and general media. Aberystwyth University has Aber Media Productions, which would be ideal to utilise. That particular society would gain experience in recording and broadcasting matches and the lacrosse community in the UK (or the World) would get a regular series of games to watch. It would seem a sensible match between the sports club and society. In practice, there are likely to be a lot more complications, but innovative ideas have never been easy to get off the ground.

For the meantime, I guess I will have to stick to Youtube and reading up on other websites. Hopefully, lacrosse continues to grow and its media reach will encapsulate more of the globe. On the lighter side, the future can only get better!