Athletic journo details plan that would see West Brom ‘go it alone’ next season
West Brom are planning on launching their own in-house streaming service next season, according to The Athletic journalist Steve Madeley.
The service will be supplemented by a “bespoke” website, and will be implemented regardless of if the Baggies win promotion this summer or not.
The understanding is that the club plan to “go it alone”, and will no longer rely on the EFL’s iFollow streaming service.
The platform has been plagued by issues since its inception, and was beset by technical difficulties on Saturday as it crashed while struggling to cope with the demands of a sudden influx of supporters who are using the service in lieu of a physical season ticket.
In the Championship, 13 clubs have already opted out of the iFollow project – even though it incurs a £40,000 per season from the EFL to do so.
We can’t say that we’re not in favour of West Brom going it alone with their streaming service.
On paper, iFollow is a great idea, but it has been disrupted by so many technical issues that it’s become more hassle than it’s worth.
A large part of the issue, as we see it, is that covering all 71 EFL clubs every single weekend is a major operation, and at times it hasn’t felt as if iFollow has the capacity to cope with that task.
Last Saturday – when it essentially went dark on fans across the country for the first 10 minutes of their sides’ first outings since March – only served to reinforce that view.
Obviously, if the Baggies go up this could be something of a moot point anyway, but cutting out the middle man and creating a service that is tailored to the fans and solely focused on our club seems like a no-brainer in our opinion.
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