money+football=ripped off supporters

so not only do we have to pay £30+ a time to watch 22 rich men play in a sponsored stadium, wearing sponsored shirts, whilst 'enjoying' over-priced sponsored food & drink, reading the 'advert' that passes for a match day programme, we now have to pay for the privilege of knowing who our team is playing.

the information below was taken from freethefixtures.com and it makes very interesting reading.

"On Thursday 14th June the fixtures for the 2007/08 football season were published. However most fan run websites will not be displaying them....

Football DataCo Ltd is a British company that grants licenses to third parties allowing them to reproduce certain intellectual property such as fixture lists and statistics.

Football DataCo is wholly owned by FA Premier League and The Football League. Fans have 3 options.....

1) Become the clubs nominated fanzine and get a licence for the fixtures for £1+VAT and a delivery charge to your site £104+ VAT, delivery via email! A total of £123

2) Get authorisation from the club to use their fixtures in isolation. This would be £266+VAT plus delivery charge A total of £435

3) Without authorisation from the club you must buy fixtures for all clubs - this is £4244+VAT for the licence and £5200+VAT for delivery A total of nearly £12,000.

The fees are charged to all 3rd parties including independently owned football fan sites and fanzines. Numerous fan sites have been closed as a result of legal action initiated by Football DataCo Ltd.

We the fans should be free to publish our teams fixtures on our sites.

Please sign the petition and we will present it to the people that are responsible for charging the fans to publish THEIR fixtures!"

i think you'll agree that this is getting silly and needs to be stopped before the soul is totally taken out of the dying body that is football.

sign the petition!

stop it now!