The two leagues run a company called 'Football DataCo Ltd' which this season have will yet again be charging for the use of fixtures on websites unless a substantial fee is paid to them to do so.
The company has the task of policing and inforcing their regulations which fans believe are ridiculous, it is believed that in 2003, this company shut down around 270 website because of non compliance with the 'rules'.
Fixtures are a right, not a privalege for football fans and this has meant that many sites who do not want to pay the £258 fee for displaying fixtures cannot provide supporters with a fullm list of accurate information and must instead find ways round doing this without risking legal punishment.
It is not known what exactly this football league and premier league achieves from turning fans away from 'smaller' fans sites and towards 'mainstream' alternatives, this is yet another showing that football is no longer about the fans, it is more and more about the money and this is wrong.
Infact in 2004, the European court of justice ruled that it was wrong and illegal to make money from lists of runners and riders of fixtures I like many other editors would encourage fans of football, not just this club but all across the country to email your discust to the football league about not being able to see fixtures on 'fan sites' because they want to make money out of the process,
<fl@football-league.co.uk>
(Thanks to our friends over at http://www.barnsley-mad.co.uk for providing much of the information included in this article)