Morton Supporter

This. Personally, I would like to think that a streaming service could work so that we have the infrastructure to ‘go it ourselves’ when the next TV deal comes round. But it’s just not worth pursuing right now - because football is one of the lowest priorities to restart (recognising and sympathising with the few hundred folk who’s livelihoods depend on it) and because it’s a massive financial risk. You think the last couple of months of trying to find a resolution that meets “sporting integrity” have been a minefield? Wait til we’re asking clubs to pull together a squad for a season with no clear start date or format as we speak, with no certainty over revenue, and which could be put on hiatus at any point under this desperate, childish and half-arsed restart.

Can anyone here tell me what the benefit is to getting back to playing football any time soon? Even if you’re comfortable with the ethics of taking up testing capacity and health care resources, as well as asking people to pay on the back of swathes of unemployment and wage reductions - be that through gate receipts or streaming subscriptions - clubs will tie themselves into contracts and costs that they can otherwise avoid with the very real risk that restrictions return in their current which makes any football impossible. So why bother? What is the benefit here, other than a bit of entertainment for one section of society? For most clubs, it will be much safer for them to suspend their operations indefinitely. That of course won’t suit all clubs - particularly those committed to long-term contracts, ground leases or which have debts to service - but there isn’t a solution that suits all. I appreciate, and sympathise, that this would effectively mean unemployment for a swathe of full-time players (and a significant reduction in income for part-time players) as well as club employees - but they could be looking at redundancies anyway if the game tries to restart in such uncertain circumstances.

Not to mention the fact that one of the Cups had already been won on the park.

Apart from mine.

I don’t think I would agree with that, sorry. I would think most people decide to go to games - either on a game-by-game basis, or when buying a season ticket - based on: - finances - other weekend commitments, e.g. childcare or work - how sure you are of how your team are going to get on, good or bad - distance and travel time - whether friends/family are going, if you’re in it for the social aspect I don’t imagine the fact that each other team makes up 10-11% of your fixtures has much bearing at all on fans’ decisions to go to games, unless of course they were looking for an excuse not to. in which case, I think they should just leave the rest of us to keep on enjoying what we have for what it is, imperfect and all. Yes it’s a skunner to draw teams from your own league in the Cups, but that comes back to the point in my earlier post that you either radically restructure - by removing things like seedings which give large swathes of bigger clubs byes to later rounds - or you just grin and bear it because the downsides of the alternatives are far greater.

I’m sceptical that anyone who says they can’t stand playing the same teams four times actually goes to the games. I’m by no means any sort of super-fan myself, but all I want is to go to Cappielow and hopefully see Morton play well and win, within a competitive context. The fact I may have seen the opposition in October isn’t in my thought process and I find it bizarre it would have any bearing on anyone else’s feeling about whether they wanted to go and see their team that week. Any reconstruction to create bigger leagues solely to move away from a double-round robin would be dreadful as: (1) the higher the stakes, the bigger the interest from fans, which obviously creates revenue and, not to be underestimated, memories. (2) the knock-on effect is to weaken and reduce competition within every single division below that sits within the pyramid. Ergo, smaller divisions are better and, in the absence of radical changes to levelise spending, we should be wary of any reconstruction. I think it only needs tinkering, specifically on the hellacious Premiership playoff format, and potentially moving the SPFL’s 12-team league to the bottom tier rather than at the ‘Premiership’ level which is a misnomer when it’s our largest league.