European football governing body Uefa is to provide live audio-streaming reports and comprehensive results coverage for important games on its website.

But Uefa.com will offer a selection of video clips only. It has no interest in showing the time-delayed broadcast of games (introduced this season by English Premiership clubs). Neither delivery mechanism interferes with the rights of terrestrial broadcasters.

Alexandre Fourtoy, chief executive of Uefa.com, told The Register that the "technology was not yet ready" for live streaming video because the user experience of pictures in a little Window fails to deliver what football fans look for in coverage of games.

Uefa.com wants to become Europe's Largest football portal. It will offer comprehensive coverage of all Uefa competitions, including the Uefa Champions League, Uefa Cup, youth and women's competitions. Competition coverage will include live audio streaming of matches, audio round up shows, video clips of footage, photo galleries, match reports and news of the competitions (and other matches).

Fans will have free access to live audio-streaming reports of Champions League games. Services providing by the site are free and designed to fulfil Uefa's role of promoting football in its 51 member countries.

However future development of the site may involve the introduction of premium services for targeted coverage along the lines of fee-based services available offline today, Fourtoy told us.

Uefa.com received more than 1.5 million page views and nearly a quarter of a million visits when it provided live video and audio coverage of the Uefa Champions League draw on August 23.

The site runs IIS 5 on a Windows 2000 platform. Uefa.com has signed a two-year hosting deal with Verio, which will replicate the content of the site over 110 global data centres to provide high availability and resilience. ®

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