Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

One of the real changes in sport since Sideline Sid was a nipper has been the emergence of technology to complement on-field action.

The older generation of rugby fanatics can still vividly recall Winston McCarthy's 'Listen, Listen – It's a Goal” as we tuned into rugby on the radio in the 1950's and 1960's.

McCarthy was the first commentator to make you feel you were at the game with his rising and falling excitement during the match.

Television arrived in the country in the early 1960's, but it wasn't until 1972 the first rugby test match was televised live, albeit in black and white.

The first live colour telecast came in against Scotland at Eden Park in 1975, which will be forever remembered as the 'water polo” test due to the abysmal wet conditions.

Today, with a subscription to Sky Television, we can watch wall to wall live sport from throughout the world, such as last Saturday night where the All Blacks encounter with France was followed by the Lions narrow win over Australia.

The full on rugby coverage carried on until the wee small hours, with the final two games from the South African four team series featuring South Africa, Scotland, Samoa and Italy.

During June we have had the full on finals action from the NBL and NHL and with Wimbledon starting this week we can watch the best sport in the world – providing we have the bucks to pay for it.

However, the arrival of the internet has changed the way that most sports administrators communicate with their stakeholders forever. A full page of sports draws in the local newspaper have long gone, with most sports posting their draws on their websites.

A quick flick through Western Bay and Bay of Plenty websites of rugby, football, swimming, golf, hockey, basketball, softball and cricket showed all are making good use of their websites.

While they all have different styles of homepages they all have much the same common denominators.

Current news, draws and results, along with specific coaching and official's information, make the websites the first port of call for information

For a more personal touch, most have a Facebook page with several also creating a database for distributing regular newsletters.

At the 2010 World Rowing championships at Lake Karapiro – Twitter proved a great tool for instantaneous results as the boats crossed the line in each and every race.

It was interesting to read about Sky Television losing the English Premier League coverage to a new consortium, with coverage available over the internet.

While it may be good news that the Sky monopoly has been broken, the reality is that this is just another form of pay to view.

Whether we like it or not, free to air sports coverage is mostly dead in the water with the free to air networks in New Zealand picking up the scraps.

There is a direct link between the explosion of professional sport in the last couple of decades and the emergence of pay for view sport on television. As player salaries have rocketed up - sport has turned to the (so far) deep well of pay for view television to fund their spiraling costs.

Where will it end for the sports fans? – Sideline Sid has no idea, but is certain that viewers will have to keep putting their hands in their pocket to watch top line sport live on the box.

Seeya at the Game.