England v Scotland match live over the Net

Football fans north and south of the English border will no doubt be delighted to know that Saturday's clash between Scotland and England is to be beamed live over the Internet courtesy of British Sky Broadcasting and the Scottish Gas Football Association.

In anticipation of enormous demand, BT and UUNet, which will supply the backbone for the service, said they have allocated an "unprecedented amount of bandwidth".

The first leg of the Euro2000 play-off will be broadcast live from Hampden Park at skysports.co.uk from 2 pm onwards.

A spokesman for Sky Sports sought to reassure Internet users that no matter what the demand, they will be able to view match: "This is the first international football match to be broadcast live on the Internet but we are confident of our technical capabilities. The match will also be shown in eight million homes and 40,000 pubs, and it will be restricted to people using British and Irish ISPs so it won't be quite the same as something like NetAid."

This spokesman also denied that this was in any way selling short those who have already paid to see the event on Sky television, adding: "Subscribers are going to be getting much more. They'll get the whole build-up with pre and post match interviews. Subscribers also get more than 600 hours of sport every year as well."