FOR 28 years they have grown fat in a mutual feeding frenzy. And the incestuous union between the Premier League and Sky Sports has altered the face of English football beyond recognition. Our top-flight is the world’s richest and most cosmopolitan league because of Sky’s cash. And Sky is our pre-eminent satellite broadcaster thanks to […]
FOR 28 years they have grown fat in a mutual feeding frenzy.
And the incestuous union between the Premier League and Sky Sports has altered the face of English football beyond recognition.
Our top-flight is the world’s richest and most cosmopolitan league because of Sky’s cash.
And Sky is our pre-eminent satellite broadcaster thanks to Premier League football.
So just what on Earth are Sky playing at now?
How can they, and the league’s other broadcast partners, possibly justify demanding £330million from Premier League clubs even if they successfully complete the season?
Should they fail to get the show back on the road that bill would be £760m. And, fair enough — no product, no pay.
But a £330m rebate for a completed fixture list? How does that work?
Especially when viewing figures are likely to soar given that none of us have much else to do at present?
An increase of more than 50 per cent for BT Sport’s coverage of the Bundesliga restart, as well as record numbers watching in Germany, suggests as much.
You can certainly accuse clubs of all sorts of ill behaviour during the coronavirus lockdown.
Greed, paranoia and arrogance as well as a spectacular misreading of the public mood from some over a desire to use public money to furlough staff.
But you can hardly argue that all but a self-interested few haven’t been bending over backwards to ensure that Project Restart happens.
In case Sky hadn’t noticed, there’s an unprecedented global pandemic out there.
And even though there are some Dr Evil-style megalomaniacs among the 20 club owners, even the maddest of conspiracy theorists have yet to accuse them of infecting bats in a Wuhan market.
On the contrary, clubs are risking the wrath of the public as well as many of their own players and staff by doing all they can to complete the season and their contractual obligations to broadcasters.
Sure, Sky, BT and others have lost money through cancelled or paused subscriptions as well as a loss of advertising. Hasn’t everyone in the media suffered similarly?
And it is not as if any more than a handful of the remaining fixtures will be screened live on free-to-air TV, so there will be precious little loss of ‘exclusivity’ for Sky and Co.
To demand such a significant figure will only damage the Premier League ‘product’ going forward. It is not in Sky’s own interests to do so.
And when the next cycle of TV rights are flogged for 2022-25 — with Amazon and others ready to get serious — Sky are hardly going to enjoy ‘preferred partner’ status if they fail to pay clubs the full amount for this season.
Sure, Sky money has improved the quality and spectacle of the English game but it has not come without negative consequences — some of Richard Keys’ tailoring in the early years, for starters.
Supporters who want access to all top-flight football have bled through their noses for subscriptions.
And those who follow their clubs home and away have had to put up with ridiculous fixture scheduling for years thanks to TV’s increasing influence.
Then there’s the fact that TV will always want to make itself an integral part of the game rather than a mere observer.
It was the TV industry which prompted the blight of VAR and, as all interested parties continue to fight like cats in a sack, there have been a series of fanciful ideas floated about increased access.
In-game interviews with managers and players, microphones in technical areas and cameras in dressing rooms — as if the Premier League should become some Celebrity Big Brother house.
Perhaps there are elements of posturing and sabre-rattling in all of this.
But clubs are going above and beyond to fulfil their obligations to broadcasters.
And broadcasters should realise that they need football every bit as much as football needs them.
SO an entire round of the Bundesliga was staged at the weekend and how many instances of crowd disorder were reported due to supporters congregating outside empty stadia? None.
Surely this should scupper any remaining desire — chiefly from paranoid policemen — to see the Premier League season played out at neutral stadiums?
You will hear a lot of nonsense about Germany being a more orderly and obedient society than Britain — often from those who still base their view of German people on old episodes of ’Allo ’Allo.
Yet anyone who has watched football in Germany will realise their fan culture is more similar to our own than that of any other nation.
And those of us who attended Arsenal’s chaotic Europa League game with FC Cologne in 2017 — delayed by an hour and almost abandoned due to severe overcrowding — can tell you the behaviour of travelling German supporters was among the worst and most dangerous seen at a match in England for decades.
German fans, like English fans, are perfectly capable of not standing outside a stadium for no apparent reason.
Frankly we’ve all got better things to do with our time — including the option of actually watching the match in the comfort of our homes.
So let’s stop patronising and vilifying football supporters. Let’s get these behind-closed-doors games on at the stadiums they were intended to be played at.
