Sky Sports are Taking the Piss Thread

[Ranaldo Bairn]

2 minutes ago, lubo_blaha said:

They’re only showing those championship games because BT have the EPL midweek games. 

Similarly for this weekend, Dons vs Rangers was at 4.30pm so it could be up against the FA Cup semi which they didn’t have the rights to.

When the English league started later due to covid, they couldn’t get enough of the Scottish games, for a couple of weeks.

Scottish football is nothing more than a gap filler for them. All we get are the cheeks away from home at a weekend lunchtime, apart from the rare occasions when they don’t have the EPL to show. There can’t be many leagues where the televised games are arranged completely around the convenience of a foreign league and audience. 

Another union dividend 

[strichener]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

Is that figure that unrealistic though?

Make it SPFL TV, all four divisions are covered and all fans have access. Something like £10 a month for your club, £15 a month for your division, £20 a month for full access.

Average attendance wise across the 4 divisions you get about 180,000 as match goers. Obviously some people will be getting counted twice but thats likely more than offset by people that dont go to games who'd buy the service.

Over a month thats 720,000. Add in overseas fans and you could probably safely say it would have ~800,000 subscribers a month.

At worst youd be earning £8m a month, league season is 9 months roughly? So £72m a season.

Current deal is £37.5m a season.

Not a clue how much it would cost to run the whole thing but is it going to be £30m?. Tried to see how much the EFL pay to run iFollow but seems its done through Sky in some way.

Pointless speculating anyway, we're tied to Sky until 2029 now anyway. 

Really?  You think one in three Scottish households is going to pay £10 or more per month for SPFL TV.  And here was I thinking that Doncaster was the biggest fool in Scottish football.

[Thenorthernlight]

1 hour ago, UsedToGoToCentralPark said:

Just got an email that you can get 12 months of Viaplay for £59.  Even at that price I'm not convinced it's great value and weighing up subscribing.

That’s the price for IPTV, for which you get to see any club in the UK that you want. 

I’m staggered anyone subscribes to shite, patronising, half arsed Sky Sports, or BT, Viaplay etc. 

 

 

[Thenorthernlight]

38 minutes ago, strichener said:

Really?  You think one in three Scottish households is going to pay £10 or more per month for SPFL TV.  And here was I thinking that Doncaster was the biggest fool in Scottish football.

No, they won’t.

And yes, he is. 

[RandomGuy.]

7 hours ago, strichener said:

Really?  You think one in three Scottish households is going to pay £10 or more per month for SPFL TV.  And here was I thinking that Doncaster was the biggest fool in Scottish football.

I cant remember why i multipled the 170,000 by 4 again, when its monthly payments, tbh. 

[itzdrk]

I wish they would just sell every match and have every match broadcast (something similar to Germany).  Allowing Sky to pick means only low quality matches will be shown.  

[anotherchance]

18 hours ago, lennyzer0 said:

 

If we're stuck with a 12 team league, then the split is actually a reasonably exciting way to end the season - but the way that SKY picks the games makes it much worse for tv viewers.

Taking Rangers away to Hibs instead of Aberdeen away to Hearts is just a joke.

You're right - but this works out better for the match attending fan, albeit by accident rather than design.

From our point of view, we've got a 3pm Saturday KO in Edinburgh in what's likely to be something approaching a 3rd place decider. A relatively small away allocation, which will create a ticketing scramble and the buzz that goes along with that. Likely to be a game which is selling out regardless, granted, but perhaps that's where challenging the 3PM Saturday blackout, or exploring PPV options comes into it.

When BT were all over it, too often we ended up at Kilmarnock or Paisley at arsehole o'clock on a Sunday, probably on the say so of some nitwit decision maker based in Birmingham. Far, far worse for the match attending punter.

 

[lennyzer0]

37 minutes ago, anotherchance said:

You're right - but this works out better for the match attending fan, albeit by accident rather than design.

From our point of view, we've got a 3pm Saturday KO in Edinburgh in what's likely to be something approaching a 3rd place decider. A relatively small away allocation, which will create a ticketing scramble and the buzz that goes along with that. Likely to be a game which is selling out regardless, granted, but perhaps that's where challenging the 3PM Saturday blackout, or exploring PPV options comes into it.

When BT were all over it, too often we ended up at Kilmarnock or Paisley at arsehole o'clock on a Sunday, probably on the say so of some nitwit decision maker based in Birmingham. Far, far worse for the match attending punter.

 

Oh, definitely. And it's worth noting that the clubs couldn't give a toss about the match attending fan either - witness Hibs decision to move a 3pm kick off for the last derby to 12:30 so that they could sell PPV, and Hearts willingness to go along with that.

[VincentGuerin]

13 hours ago, Dons_1988 said:

Sky have never made any secret of what they want from the tv deal. 

The clubs are happy for them to do it. Be angry at the clubs. 

I'm sure I've made this point before, but the base issue here is the really low calibre of the people running the clubs in Scotland.

I've been a shareholder at Hearts for about twenty years and have myself raised issues with the club and been at meetings when others have done so, only to see things repeatedly shrugged off with a 'what can we do?' attitude. Especially when it comes to improving actual governance of the game and how it is organised and marketed.

Our clubs are very small businesses and attract a certain type of person, while being unable to attract genuinely capable people to key roles. In short, a lot of them are run by people who are not particularly bright, not particularly ambitious, and precisely not the kind of people who are going to really push back against the status quo. There's a current debate about how to staff the Foundation of Hearts, for example. I favour a full-time, properly salaried level of staff, but what level of staff for roles like that can we realistically afford?

The problem becomes bigger further down the leagues where a lot of clubs' boardrooms are populated by Rangers or Celtic fans who like putting on a blazer and being important at their local club. I've met these folk.

So, what we get is fucking amateur hour for generations.

In other countries there would be fan strikes, tennis balls, empty away ends, banners, Old Firm fans would have been boycotting Sunday 12pms for months etc. But in Scotland we have such apathy, partly as a result of our league being dominated by two clubs for so long, that we do absolutely nothing and nothing will ever change.

[Squonk]

Like everyone else, I'm sick to the back teeth of the woeful coverage of Scottish football.

However, the fact that Celtic and Rangers* games are given such prominence is down to simple economics. Top priority for Sky, BT, Viaplay and other commercial broadcasters is the dividend payable to their shareholders, and that's dependent on the advertising revenue generated on matchdays.

However unpalatable it may be, that's always going to be higher when one or both of the gruesome twosome are involved, compared to Ross County versus Kilmarnock for example, due to the significant gulf in the size of their support and potential viewership.

None of these broadcasters are required to provide what's best for Scottish football as a whole, so none of them will. They don't know the meaning of benevolence, only viewing figures. Even the advert-free, publicly-funded BBC has to have one eye on its viewing figures, hence its massively skewed coverage of all things Old Firm.

Unfortunately, a near-forty year duopoly shows no signs of ending any time soon. Even when one half of the duopoly died, its corpse was propped up on a mortuary slab wearing a blue 'born-in-1872' t-shirt and we were invited to believe a fairy-tale that would've been too cringe-worthy for Hans Christian Andersen or Roald Dahl.

Roll on another forty years of the same old.

 

 

 

[Swello]

1 hour ago, anotherchance said:

You're right - but this works out better for the match attending fan, albeit by accident rather than design.

From our point of view, we've got a 3pm Saturday KO in Edinburgh in what's likely to be something approaching a 3rd place decider. A relatively small away allocation, which will create a ticketing scramble and the buzz that goes along with that. Likely to be a game which is selling out regardless, granted, but perhaps that's where challenging the 3PM Saturday blackout, or exploring PPV options comes into it.

When BT were all over it, too often we ended up at Kilmarnock or Paisley at arsehole o'clock on a Sunday, probably on the say so of some nitwit decision maker based in Birmingham. Far, far worse for the match attending punter.

 

Yep - I reserve the right to be both offended at the fucking dire choice of games by Sky and delighted at the fact that I'll be at four 3pm kickoffs and a standard midweek 7:45pm. 

[lubo_blaha]

2 hours ago, Squonk said:

Like everyone else, I'm sick to the back teeth of the woeful coverage of Scottish football.

However, the fact that Celtic and Rangers* games are given such prominence is down to simple economics. Top priority for Sky, BT, Viaplay and other commercial broadcasters is the dividend payable to their shareholders, and that's dependent on the advertising revenue generated on matchdays.

However unpalatable it may be, that's always going to be higher when one or both of the gruesome twosome are involved, compared to Ross County versus Kilmarnock for example, due to the significant gulf in the size of their support and potential viewership.

None of these broadcasters are required to provide what's best for Scottish football as a whole, so none of them will. They don't know the meaning of benevolence, only viewing figures. Even the advert-free, publicly-funded BBC has to have one eye on its viewing figures, hence its massively skewed coverage of all things Old Firm.

Unfortunately, a near-forty year duopoly shows no signs of ending any time soon. Even when one half of the duopoly died, its corpse was propped up on a mortuary slab wearing a blue 'born-in-1872' t-shirt and we were invited to believe a fairy-tale that would've been too cringe-worthy for Hans Christian Andersen or Roald Dahl.

Roll on another forty years of the same old.

 

 

 

The ridiculous part for me is that they don’t even use all the games they have rights to. Every season they end up well short of the 48(?) they’re entitled to. They could have shown Hearts vs Aberdeen, a relegation decider etc as well as Rangers away games but they seemingly don’t even think it’s worth the hassle.

[Brother Blades]

9 hours ago, VincentGuerin said:

I'm sure I've made this point before, but the base issue here is the really low calibre of the people running the clubs in Scotland.

I've been a shareholder at Hearts for about twenty years and have myself raised issues with the club and been at meetings when others have done so, only to see things repeatedly shrugged off with a 'what can we do?' attitude. Especially when it comes to improving actual governance of the game and how it is organised and marketed.

Our clubs are very small businesses and attract a certain type of person, while being unable to attract genuinely capable people to key roles. In short, a lot of them are run by people who are not particularly bright, not particularly ambitious, and precisely not the kind of people who are going to really push back against the status quo. There's a current debate about how to staff the Foundation of Hearts, for example. I favour a full-time, properly salaried level of staff, but what level of staff for roles like that can we realistically afford?

The problem becomes bigger further down the leagues where a lot of clubs' boardrooms are populated by Rangers or Celtic fans who like putting on a blazer and being important at their local club. I've met these folk.

So, what we get is fucking amateur hour for generations.

In other countries there would be fan strikes, tennis balls, empty away ends, banners, Old Firm fans would have been boycotting Sunday 12pms for months etc. But in Scotland we have such apathy, partly as a result of our league being dominated by two clubs for so long, that we do absolutely nothing and nothing will ever change.

Excellent post. I think it’s the inevitability of it all that creates the apathy. Teams with a decent squad and are up there at the January window (I know it’s been a while), are simply out-bought, if not bought -out by the ugly sisters. 

It’s very frustrating, but unless handicaps are put on them, it will never change. The UCL money alone has changed Scottish football for the long term, it might have been good for our game if the super league had gone ahead & they were invited to the lower echelons. 
As for fan protests, great, but unless the big two participate as fan groups rather than the bigoted arseholes they are, no chance of the league doing anything. They couldn’t give a shit if a game at Tynecastle or Tannadice was disrupted for 30 mins while tennis balls were cleared from the pitch, as long as they have the bigotfest 4 times in the league & market it as a world football event (it isn’t). 
TLDR- until we are rid of the big two, nothing will change. 
 

[Shuggie_Murray7]

Does anyone know how many of their 48 game allcation Sky have already used up and will use up by the time the last ball has been kicked?

[IrishBhoy]

1 hour ago, Shuggie_Murray7 said:

Does anyone know how many of their 48 game allcation Sky have already used up and will use up by the time the last ball has been kicked?

Including the 5 post-split fixtures I believe they are still able to televise another 7 fixtures to fulfill the 48 game allocation. To completely ignore the relegation battle, as well as the fight for European places, and show only 5 games all involving the OF is nothing short of scandalous. The fact that they still have 7 games that they could show makes it, somehow, even worse.
 

It’s not something that will come as a surprise to anyone on here, to learn that our broadcasters only care about 2 teams, but how can the SPFL stand idly by and watch the league being demeaned in this manner by the very people who are supposed to showcase our game. Thankfully we’re not tied down to any long term contract with Sky… oh wait, we are. 

[DumbartonBud]

We can’t even show the games they have no interest in on the final round of top six fixtures. 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65412750

[SJFCtheTeamForMe]

On 25/04/2023 at 23:01, Thenorthernlight said:

That’s the price for IPTV, for which you get to see any club in the UK that you want. 

I’m staggered anyone subscribes to shite, patronising, half arsed Sky Sports, or BT, Viaplay etc. 

 

 

Any recommendations of a good one?

[IrishBhoy]

8 minutes ago, SJFCtheTeamForMe said:

Any recommendations of a good one?

Ask a friend or work colleague who already has one where they got it from and they can usually contact a Telegram or WhatsApp group to get you set up. Buy a firestick with the remote from Amazon, think it’s about £35, and once you get access to one of these IPTV groups they will send you a username and password. Download a couple of apps on the firestick and log in with your details. Et Voila… free telly. 
 

(Not strictly free I pay £45 for a year’s subscription, but as good as). 

Edited April 27, 2023 by IrishBhoy

[Shuggie_Murray7]

32 minutes ago, DumbartonBud said:

We can’t even show the games they have no interest in on the final round of top six fixtures. 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65412750

What a stupid fucking rule. The folk that are going to watch that game will be mostly Celtic or Aberdeen fans. Other than those fans at home watching on TV,  a big chunk will also be at the game.

I fail to see how Hibs vs Hearts eats into that audience too much? Would all Hibs and Hearts fans not actually going to the game instead tune into Aberdeen vs Celtic. I know I most likely wouldn't.

It's a nonsense.

 

[Thenorthernlight]

2 hours ago, SJFCtheTeamForMe said:

Any recommendations of a good one?

The key thing is having good t’internet.

Most of the providers are much of a muchness.