Yesterday, there was a panoply of competition available to watch on network or cable television. You had two enormous gridiron football games, regular-season fixtures in ice hockey and basketball, the denouement of the 24 Hours of Daytona auto race, and European soccer, including an FA Cup tie involving a celebrated team from Wrexham, Wales.
But perhaps one of the best and most competitive contests that occurred was one that almost nobody saw. That’s because the FIH World Cup of men’s field hockey was entirely and completely behind its own paywall.
The World Cup, a competition that happens once every four years, was shoved into 2023 because of COVID-19, and took place in India. The final saw Germany, a team which finished in second in its pool to Belgium, have a final rematch with the Red Devils, and were able to come out 5-4 shootout winners after a 3-3 tie.
Germany had an extraordinary series of results in the knockout stages of the competition. In the quarterfinals, they were down two against England in the final minutes, but pulled level at the death and won the shootout. In the semifinal round, Germany had fallen behind 2-0 to Australia, but pulled level. The Kookaburras took the lead with two minutes to go, but the Germans scored twice in the final minute in one of the most extraordinary phase of hockey you will ever see.
But many people didn’t see it, thanks to the Watch Hockey paywall, the average person couldn’t see the game unless they not only had the needed infrastructure to watch the games, but the subscription fee to watch the game, or a week’s worth of games.
Given what has been going on in terms of streaming video, especially in soccer recently, it’s unfortunate that the world of field hockey is joining soccer in putting content behind paywalls.
Which isn’t growing the game.
TopOfTheCircle.com 
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