Hate to say we told you so
Posted on
April 01, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
On the rare occasions when we write something about football, and the Old Firm in particular, we always get a few angry comments from people complaining that it’s got nothing to do with politics and therefore has no business on an independence website. We trust this will put a stop to that argument once and for all.
The story is nonsense, of course, and it’s no great surprise that the original Sunday People piece doesn’t name its supposed sources. But the mere fact of the notion being aired in the UK press at all is pretty strong evidence that we’re not the only people who understand the connection between Scottish sport and Scottish politics.
There clearly is a link otherwise labour types wouldnt be pushing the notion that an independent scotland would be another NI and catholic schools would be defunct within 20 years (see george ryan and george galloway esp for sectarian card claims) yet the other way i see rangers fans types saying it will be a ‘papist state’ o.O
I’ve never really understood the ‘no place in football for politics’ train of thought, the thinking that I should keep the political part of my life seperate from the football part of my life.
And I only found WoS because of football-related posts!
link to etims.net remind me again who Kevin Rooney is again? Note the attack on the SNP and equating them with the attacks on Celtic fans. Now lets face it who of all people in Scotland should support nationalism and wish to see the end of the british state leading to a united ireland..i know if i were the unionists i would target them and play on their fears to turn them against voting for independence.
megz
Are the etims unaware that incidents that led to the legislation they refer to, (but not used) were directed against Neil Lennon and Celtic players?
hardly the acts of a party with evil intentions against Celtic. They even have at least oen Celtic fan in the cabinet
There was a huge backlash against the SNP amongst the online Celtic community following the over-zealous policing that day. Whether the SNP can take any responsibility for the policing strategy or not (a strategy seemingly employed against many organised demos, protests and campaigns), thankfully many Celtic fans, including the Green Brigade, are able to differentiate between the SNP and the referendum.
another win/win, seeing the back of the both of them and independence too.
Surely all they need do to join the English league is find somewhere in England to play their home matches.
I believe the punchline is that the FA are more powerful than Cameron.
Erchie My point is this is this Kevin rooney the same one as this one (i’m not sure if it is as i can’t find anything online, investigation is not my strong suit) link to newsnetscotland.com i get the feeling that labour types are playing the sectarian card and stoking up fears in order to reduce the yes vte
The dirty tricks will get worse next year.
The police action over Green Brigade demonstration had nothing to do with the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act but was conducted under a draconian Westminster legislation.
The Public Order Act 1986 (c 64) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It creates a number of public order offences. Google to find out how restrictive it is.
On Celtic and Rangers moving south, it won’t happen as UEFA have indicated that they will not approve of a new Russian Federation League or a proposed Balkan league.
Main problem with Scottish football is that we are being ripped off over TV rights but no one seems prepared to take the BBC and Sky to task over this.
SPL gets approx £11 million for TV rights. In Norway their domestic league football rights were sold for £44 million a year. Why is Norway so much better off?
Name three Norwegian clubs?
link to heraldscotland.com
I think we may see a lot more of the ‘lowest common denomination’ type politics as we approach 2014. The No campaign is losing the arguments and is going for the low blows. The Old Firm were always going to be manipulated for political ends when the time came for getting down and dirty.
I also suspect we may see more ‘staged events’ contrived to make the new single Scottish police force look inept. I imagine the complicit pro-unionist media will be more than happy to backseat drive through all this.
@megz
I think you’re spot on. Divide and conquer and the sectarian card has long been Labour’s way of retaining control in Glasgow.
For my own part as a Celtic supporter I don’t really understand my fellow fans who favour a no vote, but do find them generally to be the ones who are desperately clinging onto outdated notions of what Labour stand for.
The Green Brigade nonsense that was dealt with properly and adequately by the police was an illegal act and a deliberate provocation with political objectives.
There are some Celtic supporters still gullible enough to associate themselves with the similarly ill-advised orange men behind the Union Jack.
This is actually all Labour has left to offer in West Central Scotland – abusing the Catholic community by trying to maintain a ghetto mentality among the less well informed of them
I thought Celtic and Rangers were going to have a joint team called Glasgow Old Firm in the English Premiership???
link to newsnetscotland.com
SPL gets approx £11 million for TV rights. In Norway their domestic league football rights were sold for £44 million a year. Why is Norway so much better off?
The amount paid for TV rights is based on the amount the company paying think they can make from owning the TV rights. It’s a commercial decision, completely divorced from number of teams, number of fans, reputations or anything else. Norway is better off presumably because Norwegians are better off, so they can pay more for watching games, buy more things that are advertised during games and generally make the company who own the rights more money. The SPL will get more money for TV rights when it’s commercially viable: when owning the rights is worth more. It’s that simple.
Has anyone paid attention to today’s date?
The link between football and politics has always been evident in Scotland and has been used in many different ways by the U-establishment.
The ongoing background scenario, mostly in West Central, is the one relating to erosion and redirection of national identity by combining it with, and emphasising, sectarianism.
All we can really do is point it out whenever it is used thus more than usual, and avoid falling into the trap of criticising either side, because even if that is done in a completely balanced way it will still be retro-cherrypicked and used selectively by uparatchiks.
Divide and conquer is basic imperialism 1.0.1.
However it is also used in other more generic/nation-wide ways on a more sporadic and obtuse basis.
e.g. is the timing of the first England/Scotland international for years on the eve of the referendum, when the Scottish team has had its poorest showing ever over recent years just random coincidence?
Of course it is used politically.
I love football, but if I had my way I would have banned it completely from Scotland until we had a referendum.
I’m pretty sure that without football to use as a political err, football, the Brit Establishment would have not succeeded in clinging on to Scotland as long as it has.
No doubt they would have used something else instead, but what else gives as much access to the passions of so many?
Oh well, in the highly unlikely event that we do not get independence thats one more reason to hate the old firm :WINK:
On a serious note, if this is true, then we can be satisfied that panic in the Unionist camp is well and trully setting in. How are their private polls looking I wonder.
Jiggsboro –
Disagree – Sky subscribers in Scotland are seeing the majority of their subscriptions going to fund the English Premier League. When the bottom club in the EPL gets more in TV rights than the whole of the SPL put together, then there’s something wrong.
If Scottish SKY subscribers saw 25% of their subscriptions going to support home leagues, there would be a massive boost to the game financially. Advertising is a key ingredient I agree with you, but subscriptions give the core financial support.
Rev Stu has written about it previously here:
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Football is a HUGE thorn in the side of Independence. Tunnel visioned OF fans care not a jot about what’s best for Scotland but only what they think is best for their wretched clubs. Independence to most of them means the end of their dreams to play in the EPL. My own view is that the EPL is unsustainable and at some point in the not too distant future, a European League will emerge similar to the NFL set up in the US. Whether either of the Bigot Brothers – or both – are big enough clubs to be invited to join remains to be seen.
Look for the Nastier Together bunch to play both sides of the SNP = Scottish Nationalist Proddies / Scottish Nationalist Papes, for all it’s worth in the next 17 months.
The date IS 1st of April?
“The date IS 1st of April?”
The date the article was published, however, was NOT.
Disagree
Fair enough. You’re still wrong, of course. Commercial enterprises pay commercial rates. When the bottom club in the EPL gets more in TV rights than the whole of the SPL put together, then there’s something commercially right: the EPL is commercially more viable than the SPL, it therefore gets more money and how it disburses the amount of money it gets is its own affair.
If Scottish Sky subscribers see their money going to the EPL, it’s because EPL matches get more viewers than SPL matches. It really is that simple. There’s no ‘fairness’, where money is divided according to number of clubs or number of supporters or location of subscribers. Money is divided commercially: it’s invested. How much is invested where depends on what return the company thinks they can get on that investment. The SPL isn’t considered a particularly good investment. The EPL is. Scottish subscribers pay for Sky. Sky then decide how much they pay – out of the pot of all subscribers’ and advertisers’ monies – for various football rights. They don’t allocate Scottish money to Scottish rights and English money to English rights. They just buy rights and they pay what they think the rights are worth using whatever money they have.
I have no idea of the balance between subscription and advertising income – you apparently do, and I’d appreciate a link to your figures – but it’s largely irrelevant. The SPL don’t get money based on how many Scottish subscribers there are. They get money based on how many people want to watch their matches and how many advertisers want to advertise during them.
If the SPL want more money, then they need to convince Sky that more people will watch their matches and that more advertisers will want to advertise during those matches. They won’t get more money by counting the number of Scottish subscribers. They won’t get more money by pointing out that more people have heard of Celtic or Rangers than Tromso or Odd Grenland. They won’t get more money by demanding a percentage of whatever the EPL get based on population share. They’ll get more money by becoming a better commercial proposition. TV rights are business, no more, no less.
.
Mild by your standards Stu.
You must be going soft?
It’s utter drivel of course.
When I saw the headline for this on the interwebs this morning, I really thought it was a joke. Sigh…
As long ago as the Glasgow Gorbals by-election in the late 1960s (the first Westminster by-election after Hamilton, so you can imagine how worried the Labour unionists were), Labour went around the constituency pouring poison into the appropriate ears that SNP stood for Stein Next Pope or Scottish No Popery.
I am afraid that unionist leaders have never had a moral compass-they justify any and every lie based on party interest and preservation of the union.
Of cours, it is just a con, Cameron cannot over-rule the FA or UEFA on the issue, as he knows. The line will simply be that Celtic & Rangers will never get into English football if Scotland is independent-but they wont anyway, of course.
Jiggsbro,
You have just contradicted your response to Norway’s league rights being sold for 44 million.
In the UK at the moment Scots subscribers (smaller country/smaller audience) are subsidising the largest audience league, England’s (x10 larger country/larger audience). BBC as well as Sky by the way.
It is simply because the Scots leagues are seen as a lower division of the English Premiership that our subscriptions are assumed to obviously be for the ‘Premiership’. The Norwegian subscriber is not condescended to in such a manor and so their leagues are paid for in the same way as every other ‘National’ league is paid for, resulting in the 44 million as opposed to the 11 million that we receive.
You can love the free market’s simplicity all you like, but the reason free marketeers love that simplicity is the simplicity they find in rigging the market place.
I understand that as a percentage of population, Scotland has the best supported leagues in the world. Possibly not the best but up there anyway. As an example, England with ‘the best league in the world’ has 0.68% of it’s population attending matchdays while Scotland has 1.65%. An amazing stat that I would be interested in hearing your ‘open market place’ response to. link to comparetheleagues.com
o/t but on the subject of politics and sport read this labourite interpretation of Andy Murray’s recent pronouncements in the light of the readers comments:
link to leftfootforward.org
JCS on The Mound at Yes Scotland march in Edinburgh. Sep
JCS = the James Connely Society, see also Celtic supporters for Independence on their facebook page
Jiggsboro – Yep agree that Sky can do whatever they want to with their money and investments, but the fact still remains that Scottish Sky subscribers money is not reinvested into the league in the same manner that it is in England.
As for the evidence you ask for, I have none on advertising rates, but I did post the link to Rev Stu’s previous article which clearly shows that even without advertising revenues, the subscription revenue in Scotland is vastly greater than the amount Sky put back into our leagues. Even if Sky were to double it’s investment in Scottish football it would hardly make a dent on their subscription revenue alone, and anything they would receive as advertising is all gravy.
Sky have decided that the EPL is it and so with only a number of available channels they will hugely favour the English league, the knock on effect being that increasingly we see Scottish matches being pushed to ridiculous KO times because thats when Sky can broadcast them as live games – so asking say Hibs supporters to travel to Inverness for a KO time of 7.45pm on a Tuesday winter night is stupid, but will increasingly become more common.
The best way to hurt a club financially is through a drop in bums on seats not TV revenue, but because Sky now dictates to the SPL when games should be played thats increasingly what we are seeing.
Scotland gets a bum TV deal simply because our negotiators are mince.
The James Connolly Society marched with us last year. It was probably the only time they had marched in Edinburgh without needing police protection from violent bigots.
Most Scots have no idea who James Connolly was. Many who have heard the name think he was just another Irish guy shot by the British in Dublin in 1916.
I have written a short piece about James Connolly but nobody wants to publish it because of the nasty bigots it might irritate. He should be a Scottish national hero and it is time we faced that kind of bigot down.
We have his photo on the wall in our YES centre in Dunoon and have fielded a number of interesting remarks about it
“I have written a short piece about James Connolly but nobody wants to publish it because of the nasty bigots it might irritate. “
Have you sent it to us?
Jiggsbro, couldn’t we envisage a scenario where Scotland goes independent, the new Scottish Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) buys the rights to SPL – probably quite cheaply – and lots of SPL is shown free on the national broadcaster’s channels. More TV exposure of SPL, more interest, increasingly more viewers, and, in the long run, more money for the SPL for selling the TV rights the next time around.
I admit I know very little about football because ice hockey is the main spectator sport here in Finland. However, the fate of our Finnish Championship league is a textbook example of what happens to a popular spectator sport.
Finnish Championship league was on the public broadcaster YLE channels for free and the Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons were an istitution. After our first World Championship in 1995, ice hockey experienced a huge boom and the money men behind the Finnish league first sold the TV rights to a commercial channel because they paid more than YLE, and secondly, after a few years, moved (live) ice hockey to their pay channel. The die-hard fans pay (the package also includes other sporty things like F1 and ski jumping world cup) but many moderate ice hockey fans don’t want to / can’t afford to pay, so follow Finnish league ice hockey less, are increasingly less interested in ice hockey… Might even become more interested in Finnish football! 😀
Not that Finnish football was totally crap. We’ve produced the likes of Mixu Paatelainen and Sami Hyypiä, for instance, and the national team Huuhkajat (the Eagle Owls – the national team got that nickname after the resident eagle owl flew on the pitch and suspended play during a Finland-Belgium WC qualifier in Helsinki the last time around – Finland went on to win the match) Huuhkajat are not totally out in the WC qualifiers after our draw with Spain, I mean, in theory there’s still a chance if… Nah, in practice, we’re out. 🙂 I’ve seen Huuhkajat snatch defeat from the jaws of victory so many times, been there at the stadium when the collective aaaagh…. ooooh vvvittu goes off.
The thing is, people in Finland are becoming more interested in football, which is on free channels, and promoted by them, and less interested in ice hockey, which is on the pay channels – I’m talking about the general public here, of course, not die-hard fans of either sport.
The SBC of an independent Scotland could show SPL and lower leagues, and really engage people (viewers), fans of other clubs beside the old firm. It could be a good thing for Scottish football.
Excelent points lumilumi re-hockey and football in Finland…and let’s not forget that Finland hosted the 1952 Olympic Games. The BIG official Summer Games that is, and not just the Winter Games. Meanwhile the ‘UK’ had London hosting the Olymics for the third time and bragging unashamedly about it and talking about possibly hosting another as early as 2024 or 2030. No way that Wasteminster will ever fully support an Olympic bid from Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester – or elsewhere. Unlike the USovA with regional centres like St.Louis and Atlanta both hosting Olympics. My blood boils just thinking of that greedy, grasping, corrupt capital centric city on the stinking brown Thames – particularly the scotBRIT Unionist MP’s who fail to represent the people of Scotland there.
Personally, I wish Rangers would relocate to Belfast and Celtic to Dublin. That way, both could be happy representing their respective homelands without stirring up bile in Scotland.
I’m sorry, but being brought up in a staunchly Rangers house with a mother who was a lapsed catholic just cemented my aversion to the obsession of the West. Football is something I take the greatest of pains to avoid – it really is the opium of the West Scottish masses.
As for the evidence you ask for, I have none on advertising rates, but I did post the link to Rev Stu’s previous article which clearly shows that even without advertising revenues, the subscription revenue in Scotland is vastly greater than the amount Sky put back into our leagues
If you have no evidence on advertising rates, it’s probably best not to make any claims about it. I did read Stu’s piece. Nothing in it contradicts the basic point that commercial decisions determine what is paid for TV rights. Scottish subscriptions pay for Scots to watch Sky, which includes a lot more than football. That’s it. That’s all it pays for. What Sky then pay for Scottish football depends entirely on what Scottish football is worth to Sky. They won’t pay for TV rights based on the number of subscribers in a region. They’ll pay based on the return they think they can get.
Sky have decided that the EPL is it and so with only a number of available channels they will hugely favour the English league,
Sky have not decided that the EPL is ‘it’, they’ve made the commercial observation that EPL matches make them more money than SPL matches. So they pay more for them and show more of them. That really is all there is to it. They can’t show everything, so they concentrate on what makes money. What makes more money for them receives more money from them. Scottish football makes less for them than English football, so they pay less for it and show less of it (and at less convenient times). If you want Sky to pay more for Scottish football, then Scottish football – not Scottish subscriptions – has to make more money for Sky.
Sorry Stuart, but I cannot get excited aboot fitba. 22 men chasin a bag a wind aboot a park. In fact not excited: actively hostile
Every mention o Ye Olde Firme is, outwith Ye Central Belte, music tae da lugs o British Unionists/Independents/Liberals and idder land o hope and glory types. They say – why should we be ruled by The Central Belt, with their parochial sectarianism: we ill be another Ireland hint hint IRA. Not in any way implicating Tramish Laird o Bressay and future life peer here.
See da bigger pictir, I respectfully akse. Dey ir life beyond Bishpbriggs
D
You have just contradicted your response to Norway’s league rights being sold for 44 million.
No, I haven’t.
In the UK at the moment Scots subscribers (smaller country/smaller audience) are subsidising the largest audience league, England’s (x10 larger country/larger audience). BBC as well as Sky by the way.
No, they’re not. Scots subscribers pay the same subscriptions as English subscribers. No one subsidises anyone. Sky pay for rights based on what Sky think they can make from them, not on where they raise subscriptions. A purely commercial decision. They don’t think they can make much money from Scottish football. They think can make a lot of money from English football. So they don’t pay much for Scottish football and they pay more for English football. Scots are not subsidising English viewers; a commercial company is making a commercial decision about how it spends its money to make more money.
It is simply because the Scots leagues are seen as a lower division of the English Premiership that our subscriptions are assumed to obviously be for the ‘Premiership’.
This is simply nonsense. Our subscriptions aren’t assumed to be for anything except what we pay to subscribe to. Our subscriptions pay for the service we subscribe to. If we don’t like the service, we don’t need to pay the subscription.
The Norwegian subscriber is not condescended to in such a manor and so their leagues are paid for in the same way as every other ‘National’ league is paid for, resulting in the 44 million as opposed to the 11 million that we receive.
The Norwegian subscriber pays their Norwegian subscription to get their Norwegian service, in exactly the same way a Scottish subscriber pays their Scottish subscription to get their Scottish service. Sky pays for TV rights based on the money they think they can make from them. Apparently, they think they can make four times as much from Norwegian football as they can from Scottish football. Either Sky is run by idiots, or people who treat Norway as a charity case, or businessman making sensible commercial decisions. The success of Sky suggests it’s the latter. Norwegian football is worth more to them than Scottish football. Not because Norwegians aren’t condescended to, not because Scots are, but because a commercial enterprise makes commercial decisions.
You can love the free market’s simplicity all you like, but the reason free marketeers love that simplicity is the simplicity they find in rigging the market place.
I despise the free market’s ‘simplicity’ and the simplicity of rigging it. But love it or loathe it, it exists. It’s a fact. It’s the basis for commercial decisions and the rates paid for TV rights. If the market is ‘rigged’ to cheat Scottish football, I’d be intrigued to know how and why.
I understand that as a percentage of population, Scotland has the best supported leagues in the world. Possibly not the best but up there anyway. As an example, England with ‘the best league in the world’ has 0.68% of it’s population attending matchdays while Scotland has 1.65%. An amazing stat that I would be interested in hearing your ‘open market place’ response to.
There’s a glaringly obvious ‘market place’ response: If more people are attending matches, then less people are watching them on Sky. Of course, the number of people attending matches, or how well supported a league is, is of no relevance to the amount paid for TV rights. All that counts is how much can be made from the rights: how much people will pay for watching a match on TV and how much advertisers will pay for advertising during a match. Scottish football doesn’t make Sky as much money as English football or Norwegian football. That’s it. As such, the various amounts paid for TV rights are entirely fair and proportionate. Want more money for Scottish football? Get more people to watch it on TV. It’s that simple.
“No, they’re not. Scots subscribers pay the same subscriptions as English subscribers. No one subsidises anyone.”
This might be true in the most literal technical sense, but the bottom line is that money flows out of Scotland and into English football. That’s an acceptable working definition of “subsidy” in most people’s eyes, whatever the finer points of process.
I agree with you Derick. A wee wumman chasing a bag a wind into Subway was much more entertaining!
Jiggsbro, couldn’t we envisage a scenario where Scotland goes independent, the new Scottish Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) buys the rights to SPL – probably quite cheaply – and lots of SPL is shown free on the national broadcaster’s channels. More TV exposure of SPL, more interest, increasingly more viewers, and, in the long run, more money for the SPL for selling the TV rights the next time around.
We could envisage that, certainly. But I’m not sure you can get more people interested in watching Scottish football simply by showing more of it. You could make the SPL more competitive. You could make it more interesting. You could make it more entertaining. But you can’t do any of those things simply by giving it more exposure. There are a great many things wrong with Scottish football, at all levels, and none of them will be solved by screening more matches.
No, Stu. But I now shall. Cheers
@pro-loco, 6.26pm
Poor Andy! Just won the Miami title second time in a row, moved to #2 in the world, and he’s British, and being used by Britnats.
Now, I have no idea what Andy Murray’s political leanings are. I’ve been led to believe that he’s quite pro-indy but doesn’t want to advertise it. Or maybe he’s not, maybe he’s pro-union. Impossible to tell by his comments, as cited on the website linked by pro-loco.
link to leftfootforward.org
All the quotes from Andy Murray in that piece go either way. Head or heart. Head might say, the economic case for an independent Scotland is overwhelming, heart… Or the economic case for an independent Scotland isn’t compleatly proved so maybe… but heart tells me to vote YES.
Except Andy Murray isn’t resident in Scotland, so he won’t have a vote in the referendum anyway. 🙂
Poor Andy, he’s probably had enough of English/British/Scottish bigotry poured on him to last a lifetime. All he wants is to play good tennis, let’s let him do that.
Andy Murray, world #2 in the era of Federer, Nadal and Dojkovic. The boy from Dunblane has done good.
Jiggsbro , the main problem here is that the BBC did not even bid for Scottish league football rights thus depressing the price Sky had to pay to £11 million a year.
Yet BBC is spending millions of our licence fee money on lower league English football.
The BBC paid £180 million to renew the Match Of The Day highlights programme which comes on top of £15 million a year to broadcast highlights of lower English league games and an undisclosed sum for 10 Live English Championship games a season as part of a £265 million deal.
Average SKY audiences for English Premiership games is around 1 million often lower.
The English Championship (second tier) league gets £88m TV income per year with just an average of 55,000 more viewers per game compared to SPL .
Non old firm Scottish games can attract up to 200,000 viewers while the old firm games could attract up to 800,000 on Sky so even in worst case scenario a reasonable TV deal would be £60 million a year which is 1/20 th of the English figure.
If the TV companies were to invest properly then the product would improve and young players would not sold for a pittance to sit on the bench at English championship games.
@Another London Dividend
Are there many other countries where the national broadcaster refuses to support the national sport?
I understand Alan Hanson gets more money from the BBC than Scottish Football does
@lumi-lumi
I agree entirely with your interpretation of Andy Murray’s reported comments – I entirely sympathise with his position of being a minority sportsperson having to kowtow to the majority audience – all to no avail in terms of the online comments. However he has invested his earnings back into Scotland unlike other individuals and institutions.
I will support Andy Murray regardless of what he said/says on the referendum. I don’t think the result will come down to a celebrity headcount anyway.
“The boy from Dunblane has done good.”
and the mad bastard from Stirling, whose name we shall forget, failed, and failed utterly to defeat life. Ach! Dunblane.
Those who dismiss ‘football’ as having nothing to do with politics are as blinkered as those who claim ‘culture’ is all about appreciation of the ‘finer things’ in life etc.
I’ve been going into pubs for almost 35 years, and in that time visible support for the national squad has dwindled. Very few of us can afford to be part of the Tartan Army, and get up to Hampden let alone abroad, but at least, ten or fifteen years ago, we could be sure that the game would be on in the pub. Now you can’t be sure, even if you can afford to nurse a couple of pints over the two hours.
For many of our elder or poorer citizens, pub life has been ruined – the title song for ‘Cheers’ always summed it up brilliantly, and it’s nothing short of tragic that so many people end up sitting alone, listening to the radio, when they could and should be in their local enjoying (?!) the games with their pals.
If AS declared that, from now on, all Scotland internationals must be broadcast live, it would be slammed as a cheap publicity stunt, but thousands of people who really miss those busy nights would be very thankful indeed.
Yet BBC is spending millions of our licence fee money on lower league English football.
The BBC is a slightly different commercial proposition to Sky, but the same basic principles apply. It will buy in whatever will attract audiences. English football attracts bigger audiences than Scottish football. They can neither afford nor screen all UK football, so they pick the best they can get (in terms of ability to attract an audience). That’s the English Championship, not the Scottish Premier league.
I’m still unsure what the people who are unhappy about this expect to happen. Scottish football is not a good investment for broadcasters. Complaining about it won’t change that. If the English Championship gets £88m TV income per year with just an average of 55,000 more viewers per game compared to SPL, that’s because the English Championship is worth £88m. That value isn’t a simple £X per viewer. You can’t divide £88m by the number of viewers, multiply the result by the number of viewers you think a Scottish game would get and magically arrive at the value of Scottish football. The value of Scottish football is whatever the game can persuade broadcasters to pay. Broadcasters will only pay what they think will allow them to make a profit (from advertising as well as subscriptions or pay-per-views). A ‘reasonable TV deal’ would not be some percentage of the English deal. A reasonable TV deal would be one which makes a profit.
If an EPL game gets a million viewers and an Old Firm game gets 800,000, that doesn’t make the OF game worth 80% of the EPL game. For one thing, viewers are only one factor in assessing the value of showing a game. For another, the number of viewers is only one factor in advertising revenue: the socio-economic status of those viewers is also important. For another, there are only a limited number of games that can be shown, making big EPL games much more valuable. As an analogy, imagine paying for a steak dinner. What percentage of the price of that steak dinner would you then pay for a roast beef dinner? Nothing, because you’ve already had your dinner. You’ve no room for another dinner. It doesn’t matter how good the beef is, or how crispy the roast potatoes are, or how many other people like roast beef, you’ve simply no room for any more food. So the roast dinner has no value to you, despite its intrinsic value as a meal. It’s not worth 80% of the steak dinner because you like roast beef about 80% as much as you like steak. It’s worth nothing, because you’re already had the steak.
Scottish football is not entitled to value its product by comparison to English, Norwegian or any other country’s product. It’s only entitled to value it on the basis of the value that product can generate for broadcasters. The problem is that Scottish football simply does not generate as much value for broadcasters. The problem is the product, not the people that purchase it or the price they pay for it. Improve the product and the value will improve. That won’t come from independence or from creating a Scottish broadcaster or demanding parity based on spurious comparisons with other products. It will come from the game itself or from improving the socio-economic circumstances of the fans. Neither Sky nor the BBC nor any other broadcaster will do Scottish football any favours. They will make commercial decisions. It’s up to the Scottish game to make itself a more commercial proposition.
This might be true in the most literal technical sense, but the bottom line is that money flows out of Scotland and into English football. That’s an acceptable working definition of “subsidy” in most people’s eyes, whatever the finer points of process.
Money flows out of Scotland to a multinational corporation in return for a service. The multinational corporation spends that money on whatever it thinks will turn a profit. I call that ‘business’. You can call it ‘subsidy’ if you like. If, perhaps, some of the advertising revenue from Scottish football was used to top up the price paid for English football, then you’d have a subsidy. If a percentage of every Scottish Sky subscription went into the pot to pay for English football, you’d have a subsidy. If you have some accounts that show Scottish viewers pay for more than they get and the excess goes to England, then there’s a subsidy. In fact, if you’ve any evidence of money flowing out of Scotland and into English football, I’d like to see it. But there’s no subsidy. There’s only competing products, with different values. Scottish Sky viewers no more subsidise English football than English whisky drinkers subsidise Scottish distilleries.
Jiggsboro,
It’s the same as with the BBC or the National grid etc.etc. The important consideration is who or where you consider the main consumer to be.
At the moment the Scots element of the British football coverage is simply not considered to be the main consumer and so, although we pay the same subscription/BBC license, we get a very inferior service when it comes to our national consumers interests.
Just as in the BBC we get the same services as the main consumer base but less of our own interests, therefor we are subsidising another countries interests. Whether in the public or private sector, under the current anomalous constitutional arrangement of the countries of the UK this will continue.
As someone else stated, SKY in Scotland was in the lucky position to not have a national broadcaster bidding against it. Where is your free market there?
The National Grid was simply a reference to the situation where energy production is subsidised the closer to the ‘perceived’ customer base (south east of England) it is produced and penalised the further from that perceived customer base. In an Independent Scotland that perceived customer base would move 500 or so miles North.
I would forward the Idea that this is probably what is happening with the Norwegian rights. Ie, the broadcaster sees Norwegian consumers as the main market and not an adjunct to the Swedish one that can be taken for granted.
With 8.4% of UK population and higher audience figures Scotland should get at least 5% of Sky or BBC expenditure on UK sport.
Mr Cameron has just given West Ham (who will receive £60 million from Sky TV next season) who will move into Wembley stadium at the start of the 2016-17 season an estimated £160m subsidy, of which 60 million is coming from UK taxpayers (£5 million from Scotland) , to be spent on reducing its capacity from 80,000 to 54,000, installing a new cantilevered roof to cover all the seats, and installing retractable seating over the running track.
At the end of the process, West Ham will receive more than £630m of real estate with huge commercial potential and donate only £15m and £2m a year in rent for the privilege.
I’ve supported Andy Murray for years. He’s such a good tennis player, and now beginning to bring all that potential into fruition.
He’s got a bit of an image problem, though, in the United Kingdom. (Not so much in other coutries, where he’s quite liked.) The English DM readers cannot forgive the tongue-in-cheek “anyone but England” joke the 19-yr-old Murray said to Tim Henman in 2006, when Scotland was out but England was playing in the fitba WC.
Ho-hum. How many athletes on the very top of their sport are slated “back home” as much as poor Andy Murray is. 🙁
The clay court season, culminating at the French Open, will be difficult for Andy Murray. But if he keeps his form, come grass season and Wimbledon…
Jiggsboro,
‘There’s only competing products, with different values. Scottish Sky viewers no more subsidise English football than English whisky drinkers subsidise Scottish distilleries.’
Ah, I see. there is no such thing as cultural value, only business.
You might have said that at the beginning and saved us wasting our time discussing something that we weren’t ever going to agree on. (weesadsmily)
I went through a phase of following football for a few years but got bored of it, the new season would start and it would just be a retread of the previous year. Don’t know how football fans put up with the boredom. Much prefer gardening these days, that’s somewhere you get to see progress year on year. I sound about 65! 😀
@Braco-
Hear hear.
Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, all that stuff. Not fingering anyone – just a general observation, but it’s true, and it’s very very sad.
I believe both Sandy Lyle and Monty, neither of whom even have Scottish accents, have said that at their peak they would have earned millions more in sponsorship if they had not stuck to their Scottish identity. Don’t ask for quotes, it was a long time ago and I can’t be bothered searching.
Hillarious – especially considering parkhead is a hotbed for yes campaigners..lol
Post as much rubbish football content as you like but it still has nothing to do with Independence whether Cameron is jokingly claiming to support two football teams that provide a place for bigots & thugs to meet every Saturday, joining the English Premier League.
Quite how 22 imature men chasing a rubberised bag of wind around on a groomed piece of grass, itself split into pointless subdivisions using industrial buckets of makeup ingredients is of any meaningful interest to anyone with an IQ larger than their show size is a mystery to be filed in the same dusty drawer as the ones marked Alien Pizzas discovered in Area 51 & Elvis Presley’s P45 issued by a fish & chip shop in Arbroath.
Please stick to the core arguments.
In response to Megz and Erchie…regards ETims…we publish Kevin Rooneys GUEST pieces as we are open to all views, regardless if they dont cover our collective Team thought. WingsOverScotland and James Dornan MSP can testify at our stout defending of the SNP, especially at the recent Kettling Outrage. The SNP do have a problem with this Bill and the way its being upheld(or used as an excuse) by the Police. We’d be happy to publish your counter pieces to Kevin Rooney article.
As a sensible Celtic supporter who would never think of attempting to walk down the middle of the Gallowgate as part of an illegal march and a deliberate provocation I remain confused. Was anybody attacked? Was anybody injured? Did the police do a splendid job in containing peacefully a demonstration designed to embarrass them and create discord?
Is this what is annoying the eejits? It didn’t work.
Och, this article in question in just the standard arse gravy…..
Here’s the thing…..
Even if you suspend reality and we see FIFA waive it’s long established ‘territorial’ rules (thus killing off the Pro League everywhere but England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and at a push France)….or Michel Platini suspending his barely disguised contempt for the EPL and they allow clubs to move to leagues…..
In such a scenario where there are no geographical constraints, then the question becomes why on earth would they want Rangers and Celtic when there are other more attractive options out there ?
They could then just as easily invite….Bayern Munich and Dortmund, the Milan Clubs and/or Juve or Real & Barca (thus giving us the definitive answer to whether or not Messi could cut it at Stoke on a cold Tuesday night)…..
The Old Firm might add a few tens of millions to a TV Deal…..any of the above could add large fractions of Billions (and give the EPL access to markets it hasn’t yet saturated)…
It looks like an April Fool piece to me…
Desimond
The police action over Green Brigade demonstration had nothing to do with the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act or sectarianism but was conducted under a draconian Westminster legislation.
The Public Order Act 1986 (c 64) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It creates a number of public order offences. Google to find out how restrictive it is.
Whether the police over reacted is another issue altogether.
Desmond I wasn’t having a go at etims (I follow etims on twitter and can see what the opinion there is) I just posted that article to show whats being said re celtic and the NSP and to question whether anyone knew if he was the same labour guy or not because i believe that they are pushing sectarianism and fear towards celtic fans.
The above story to me and many others was just an April Fool story. I’m surprised you are featuring it. But I do sometimes think you give undeserved publicity to very minor stories arising from the pens of unknown Bitter Togetherers, like eg, that from a LibDem blogger called Caron Lindsay who I had never heard of nor I am sure have most of Scotland.