The Master

The ref reacted as soon as Muirhead started clapping. There wasn't any time for anyone else to influence the decision before he'd already made it.

It’ll be the same if Dundee and Angus end up in different tiers. The only indication that you’ve left Dundee and arrived in Monifieth is that the next bus stop looks different. It’s a similar problem in the other direction where Invergowrie is by all intents and purposes a suburb of Dundee, but is in Perth & Kinross. There’s obviously no easy solution, though. As soon as you try and make restrictions more specific than “whatever is says on your council tax bill” (e.g. postcode area) it creates confusion.

Not quite true. It was Main Event that was originally only available on BT because Sky are legally obliged to offer all “premium” content to other platforms. ME was the way of doing that in as minimal a way as possible. So it was possible to get all of Sky’s Premier League games via BT, except when two were on at once (i.e. last day of the season). But BT now carry Now TV with the full Sky Sports lineup, which is what has rendered Main Event pointless.

Muirhead

Missed the goal “live” because the stream was buffering but it came back in time for the replay. Player 2 seems to be a lot more stable.

A random thought that popped into my head... With the clocks going back tonight, we’re getting ever closer to the time of year where floodlights are needed for at least part of the second half Do you think we’ll see a few clubs opting for 2pm kick-offs to try and minimise the chance of needing the floodlights on, or at least reduce the amount of time they’re on for? Anything to minimise costs.

No, it’s about having a system that allows for looser restrictions than level 1 in England, while keeping the numbering of the common levels consistent.

It might allow for test events, though, like we saw at Aberdeen and Ross County.

It starts at 0. As a computer scientist I fully endorse this numbering system. Tiers 1-3 will have broadly similar restrictions to the same tiers in England so I imagine it’s been designed to try and avoid confusion.

If you're claiming that the SPFL is niche, then it will always only ever appeal to the same audience whether it be shown on Sky, its own channel or one of the hundreds of random channels on cable and satellite. It then doesn't matter how much shelf space it gets.

I was talking in terms of production at the ground, i.e. cameras, microphones and everything that goes on inside the trucks parked outside. For live games that's (obviously) Sky's responsibility; for non-live games, it's the BBC. The SPFL might well then do further production down the line in preparation for delivery, but that's small-fry (effort and cost) compared to actually getting the pictures down the line.

If it were possible for leagues to make more money by selling games directly to fans instead of selling rights to broadcasters, the big European leagues would have done it by now. Spoiler alert: none have. There's far too many hidden costs for it to be viable, not least the cost of production. The cost to Sky of producing a single SPFL game will be considerably lower than it would be for "SPFL TV", because Sky can get better deals from the various production companies; the amount of content they show brings down the per-production cost. It's the same economics that stop small corner shops from competing with Asda and Tesco.

The issue is that defining essential items instead of essential shops is a bit of a slippery slope. You’re into the mindset of that Chief Constable who talked about searching trolleys back in March. I’d also argue that clothes shops are only “non-essential” precisely because supermarkets sell clothes.

This.