On Sunday I was sitting in a pub in North London watching the last few minutes of the Manchester City v Newcastle match on ESPN, securing a seat for the four o’clock Chelsea v Arsenal kick-off as the pub rapidly (and rabidly) Gooner-ised. As soon as the final whistle went, the landlord grabbed the TV remote control and flicked to an electronic programme guide I wasn’t familiar with, which looked not unlike the sort of arcane menu system one finds on £17.99 Freeview boxes from Tesco.
Soon though, it became clear that we, the patrons of this unnamed pub, were trawling through a grey area in UK sports broadcasting rights, when a pixellated feed of the Liverpool v Blackpool popped up on the big screen.
The feed, in this instance, was lousy – it quickly developed a habit of cutting out just as something seemed to be about to happen; much like the scene in the film Amelie where a young Audrey Tautou stands on the roof of her neighbour’s house unplugging his aerial whenever the action in his televised football game seems about to climax. We didn’t watch it for long, but there was a feeling in the pub that we had all witnessed something illicit, something wrong.
Which is ridiculous, really. Very few live events take place in this country without being televised – and there are cameras at all league football grounds every single weekend. Yet all football fans know that you can’t watch live football matches at 3pm on a Saturday, and that now you might even find one missing on a Sunday – and oddly we seem to accept it despite the lack of a reasonable explanation from either the league or the broadcasters.
The broadcasters (specifically Sky, I suppose) surely don’t like having to block access to 3pm kick-offs, do they, especially when the presenters of shows like Soccer Saturday have the live feeds right there in front of them, as do many thousands of ordinary, non-subscription-paying punters in houses and bars all over Europe. The legislation leads to the farcical situation where English people are going on holiday to the continent and marvelling at the fact they get to watch English football on their hotel TVs. So what is going on?
The Premier League argues that showing matches at 3pm on a Saturday will discourage people from attending live games. Is that it? Never mind the fact that I can’t afford to go and watch my team play in the Premier League on a Saturday or at any other time more than once a season, do they really think the people that can and do pay the hyper-inflated ticket prices are suddenly going to stop going because it’s on telly after all? Old Trafford isn’t empty when Manchester United have a 12.45 kick-off, is it? Nor is the Emirates empty when Arsenal kick off at 5.30. Neither even risk being less than complete sell-outs.
So maybe it’s pressure from the Football League. Perhaps if Sky had a red-button choice from a full programme of Premier League games at 3pm on a Saturday, no one would go down to watch Accrington Stanley. But then their fans can afford to watch their team (just about; even League Two prices are now threatening to exceed top flight tickets in other European leagues) – and who would rather be watching a team other than their own on matchday if they could be in the ground? OK, maybe Liverpool fans.
But it could all be about to change. Many people will have seen this story on the BBC website on Monday, which tells the story of a Portsmouth publican named Karen Murphy who is taking the Premier League to the European Court of Justice over her right to use foreign satellite cards to show games for which Sky has the exclusive UK broadcast rights.
She is fighting to be able to choose her own supplier – whether they be UK-based or not – and to pay a reasonable price for the service. If pubs are turning to dodgy internet feeds and punters are staying at home watching games on their laptops with Chinese commentary, how is this evidence of the Premier League protecting the quality of English football and promoting a world-class product? The Premier League will not encourage me to go to a match by forbidding Sky to show it to me.
Tags: Television Coverage
Sorry Mat, I disagree with you on this one (to an extent). I think the 3pm blackout, absurd as it seems for Premier League clubs, helps keeps crowds healthy at lower league levels.
I know plenty of people who will go and watch a game at their local club if there’s nothing else on, but would be more inclined to stay at home or go down the pub and watch a game on TV if that’s the alternative.
The further down the pyramid you go, the more this cash becomes vital. If 20-30 people stayed away from going to their non-league club to watch, say, Spurs v Villa, that will leave them with a real financial hit.
Case in point: midweek games on Champions League nights - the attendences generally suffer badly. Even for middling L1 clubs, this makes a difference.
Any extra TV revenue from removing the 3pm blackout would probably go to the Premier League and a few Championship clubs, sadly.
That said, I can’t see any good reason for not showing all the Premier League games that are being played on Sundays, like Liverpool v Blackpool.
The problem here isn’t the 3pm blackout, it’s the cost of Sky Sports subscriptions for the hospitality industry. Some pubs can be charged four figures for a month’s subscription, and that’s before ESPN is taken into account. If Sky’s charges weren’t so extortionate, most publicans would be happy to ‘go straight’.
Nobody has a divine right to watch a certain fixture on TV. Four live matches per weekend (occasionally five) is about right. Perhaps there should be one match per week ringfenced for free-to-air television but that is another question.
The 3pm blackout helps smaller clubs: I know Pickering Town’s attendances are always down if there’s a major sport even on TV that afternoon, like the Ryder Cup last weekend. A live match on Sky would just make the problem worse. Manchester Utd and Arsenal are bad clubs to choose: they are massive and always sell out. Think more of places like Birmingham and Middlesbrough, where crowds are dwindling, probably because it is simply so easy to find TV football of borderline legality at a pub or on the web.
Furthermore, why do you think virtually every midweek Football League fixture is played on the Tuesday, not the Wednesday? It’s to avoid live Champions League matches on ITV1 on the Wednesday night, or FA Cup replays later in the season.