By Kang Seung-woo
Ahn Hong-joon is a National Football League (NFL) fanatic.
The 31-year-old office worker in Suwon, south of Seoul, spends much of his free time following the NFL, from watching games to reading articles to surfing the Internet to find collectibles.
However, on Monday morning Ahn had huge problems in watching the long-awaited Super Bowl XLVI. There was no local television station broadcasting the annual championship game due to low TV ratings.
To make his situation worse, Internet websites that had regularly shown NFL games live were shut down due to copyright infringements.
After more than an hour of arduous labor to find the game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants, he managed to watch the second half via an online sports streaming site.
Like Ahn, many foreign sports fans in Korea ― foreigners as well as Koreans ― are often confronted with problems watching their favorite players and teams in other countries.
“It was frustrating that I could not catch the game from the start because there was no station featuring the Super Bowl, even though Korea has three sports cable networks,” he said.
“It’s so surprising that the Super Bowl isn’t on television in Korea,” said Matt Flemming, a native of Canada who works as a magazine editor in Seoul.
Since Park Chan-ho became a full-time Major League pitcher at the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1996, local television stations have aired his and other baseball games played in the United States live, while local cable sports networks and American Forces Network Korea (AFN Korea) broadcast popular National Basketball Association (NBA) games featuring Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley on a regular basis.
In addition, as Park Ji-sung of Manchester United and several Korean footballers have moved to overseas leagues, sports fans here have enjoyed a heyday in terms of watching games.
“At that time, I was easily able to watch many foreign sports games,” Ahn said.
However, recently, only one Korean player ― Choo Shin-soo of the Cleveland Indians ― remains in the U.S. big leagues, while the NBA has failed to maintain its popularity, so there is no local broadcaster showing the games live in Korea. The U.S. military television station also stopped broadcasting matches.
Only European football leagues including the English Premier League and Spanish Primera Liga have survived the termination of many foreign sports coverage as they are aired on such cable channels as SBS-ESPN, MBC Sports and KBS N Sports.
With access to foreign sporting events at home getting tougher, many fans are relying upon online sports streaming sites.
There are a large number of websites featuring a variety of live sports games from American football to tennis, motor sports to cricket from all over the world.
“I often watch NBA games through the Internet,” said Park Hyun-wook, who used to watch the NBA finals on AFN Korea.
“As I have a laptop, I can watch them wherever the Internet is available and it is much more convenient than watching them on television.”
However, like Ahn’s case, many of the streaming sites are illegal, so they are often closed due to copyright issues.
According to U.S. sports news outlets last week, federal authorities blocked 16 sports piracy websites that stream unauthorized sports broadcasts ahead of the Super Bowl.
“If I want to watch the Super Bowl, I have to try to find a website that is streaming the game live. It’s definitely not an ideal way to watch the big game ― the streams are illegal, so they get taken down a lot and they can be choppy,” said Flemming.
Bars have emerged as another option to watch foreign sports games.
Several bars in Itaewon and other places such as Sinchon cater to foreign sports fans by showing live games.
When the Super Bowl was played on Monday morning, 3 Alley Pub, Sam Ryans, Hollywood Grill and Rocky Mountain Tavern in Itaewon, were all full with up to 100 people there for the 8:30 a.m. kick off with other bars attracting upwards of 30 people that morning.
When big sporting occasions such as a football match between the top English Premier League teams or the National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup Finals are on, more than 100 people can be found in the bars to watch live, according to Alan Green, an Englishman living in Seoul who often visits bars to watch football games.
However, Flemming said that going to a bar also has some problems.
“(In order to watch the Super Bowl) most people can’t or don’t want to go to a sports bar at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. Some bars will replay the game later that evening, but then you have to go the whole day avoiding the score,” he said.
With fewer options on hand, Ahn is already worried that next season’s NFL coverage might be in jeopardy.
“I have witnessed my bookmarked sports streaming sites shut down for years and I am deeply concerned about whether newly-found ones will be blocked,” he said.