By a network of my peers

Most of the Premier League and FA Cup matches have been carried, but today's FA Cup final between Chelsea and Manchester United was only available live (in the USA) on pay-per-view. This left me with three options to watch the final.

1) Pay $25 for the PPV broadcast.
2) Go to a pub (like the Englander) and pay a $20 cover to watch the broadcast with obnoxious ManU supporters.
3) Wait until Tuesday and watch it recorded on FSC.

Fortunately I found an option (4). Download TVUPlayer, and watch the FA Cup Final for free on my computer from the comfort of my home. TVU is an embedded player that lets you watch television broadcasts on the internet. They offer around 100 channels, but since they're based in Shanghai, 90% of the channels are in Chinese. One of the English language channels on TVU is Star Sports out of Hong Kong, who were broadcasting the FA Cup Final live.

After downloading the player and selecting Star Sports, I started seeing a bunch of blue and red guys moving back and forth on my laptop screen. TVU is peer-to-peer television where the quality of the signal is based on the number of people watching, and since a lot of folks around the world were watching the Cup Final, the stream was near broadcast quality.

And it was kind of empowering to be able to watch something for freethat the cable company and local British pub were charging $20-plus to watch. The match itself was kind of dull though. The red guys and blue guys moved back and forth on my computer screen for the whole 90 minutes of regulation without putting the ball in the net. One reason that a lot of people don't like soccer is because many high-profile World Cup and FA Cup Finals seem to end in scoreless 0-0 draws that go to penalty kicks. Which is as anticlimactic as determining the World Series champ via a home run hitting contest. Luckily, this FA Cup Final didn't go to penalties. Didier Drogba scored in the 116th minute (26 minutes into the 30 minute OT) to give Chelsea a 1-0 lead, which they maintained til the end. It's nice that it was settled in open pay too, because no one wants to see a goal-kicking contest!

Manchester United clinched the Premier League title a couple of weeks ago (the same day the Yankees signed Clemens -- good day for the forces of evil) so they were going for the "double" (Premiership and FA cup titles in the same year) . The forces of good were working against them today, so they were held back. And TVU won my battle against the evil forces that make you pay twenty bucks to watch English soccer in the USA. It was a win all around!