Amazon started off selling books. Jeff Bezos’ brainchild was to discount book prices and deliver them to people’s homes. A noble idea and it was fairly successful. But not enough for the Bezos-es-iz of this world. So he ‘diversified’. And now is the richest man the world has ever known, without ever getting oil on his robes, and has ‘diversified’ into every possible sphere of home delivery. Which, we must all agree, he’s not too shabby at doing. But then you need to define ‘delivery’. Which in days of yaw meant a geezer in a brown jacket bringing you a parcel. But that was ‘that world’. This one is different. ‘Delivery’ now is how I get my books on my Kindle. And ‘delivery’ is how I tell Alexa all the secrets there are in my world. And in return she tells me how much rainfall there is in Patagonia in June.

And last night there was a new delivery. Football. Amazon delivered it to its streaming tv service. Only a few minutes behind because all those digitals had to be uploaded and downloaded again and although data actually transmits at the speed of light, the football played last night at Old Trafford must have actually been faster still to get such a delay.

So now we ‘go see movies’ that Netflix produce and show, in the lounge, and we ‘go to football’ in the same lounge. Or worse still, substitute ‘in the lounge’ for ‘on my phone’ and we’ve entered the world of the zombies. Just what society needs; more people looking for longer periods at their fucking phones.

It’s not that I resent this intrusion into my world by Jeff Bezos (who is American and thus BY LAW knows nothing about football) but it just further divides the pie. I get Sky Sports because 10 years ago it showed every football match played anywhere in the world at any time of day or night. Then they lost a few matches a year to a revolving cast of bankrupts and ne’er-do-wells starting with Setanta and ending up with BT. But because Sky were showing correspondingly fewer matches, they charged me more. Sounds fair.

And now, we have Amazon in on the game. They just want you to subscribe to Prime. Something I’ve managed to avoid whilst keep getting ‘free trials’ on quite a regular basis. But not last night. And as I’d missed 3/4s of the game anyway, I said I’d only give them £7.99 if they guarantee at least a draw for Spurs. And they couldn’t, even though they can guarantee virtually everything else in life, apparently.

The world is changing. Which is fine. But football???

Happy Thursday

A xxxx