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What's the most "Tin Pot" thing you've seen in the SPFL


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16 hours ago, Dons_1988 said:

. The goal is to make the league more competitive relative to other European leagues, which in turn allows our clubs to better compete in European competition. And who does most of the competing in European competition? 

I honestly don’t believe that there is many, if any, people in the hierarchy of the SPFL who hold ‘making the league more competitive’ as an important objective. I think they are quite happy using the OF as the carrot to bring in money, and having them two battling it out for the league season after season after season IS competitive in their eyes. 
 

We see it with the TV deal where it’s almost exclusively ‘diddy team at home to one of the OF’. Sky and Premier Sports don’t even try to hide the fact that they see the other 10 teams in the league as minor characters, only here to supply the OF with an opponent in order for the broadcasters to pick up OF fans subscriptions. I noticed on BT yesterday they were advertising Angers v Auxerre as one of their live games from Ligue 1. Not PSG v Lyon, or Marseille v Lille but a game between two of the ‘smaller’ clubs put out there for the world to watch. Imagine we had a TV deal that showed a match like Aberdeen v Motherwell in the opening weeks of the season? Even writing that down in black and white, our TV deal is so horrendously skewed towards two clubs having the vast majority of live games, that it’s actually unimaginable a game like that would be shown. 
 

It’s as if they are embarrassed to show games between two teams out with the OF, like having either Rangers or Celtic involved lends the live games some credibility and makes it look better for the ‘English audience’, who’s opinion our media seem to hold in such high regard.

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1 hour ago, IrishBhoy said:

I honestly don’t believe that there is many, if any, people in the hierarchy of the SPFL who hold ‘making the league more competitive’ as an important objective. I think they are quite happy using the OF as the carrot to bring in money, and having them two battling it out for the league season after season after season IS competitive in their eyes. 
 

We see it with the TV deal where it’s almost exclusively ‘diddy team at home to one of the OF’. Sky and Premier Sports don’t even try to hide the fact that they see the other 10 teams in the league as minor characters, only here to supply the OF with an opponent in order for the broadcasters to pick up OF fans subscriptions. I noticed on BT yesterday they were advertising Angers v Auxerre as one of their live games from Ligue 1. Not PSG v Lyon, or Marseille v Lille but a game between two of the ‘smaller’ clubs put out there for the world to watch. Imagine we had a TV deal that showed a match like Aberdeen v Motherwell in the opening weeks of the season? Even writing that down in black and white, our TV deal is so horrendously skewed towards two clubs having the vast majority of live games, that it’s actually unimaginable a game like that would be shown. 
 

It’s as if they are embarrassed to show games between two teams out with the OF, like having either Rangers or Celtic involved lends the live games some credibility and makes it look better for the ‘English audience’, who’s opinion our media seem to hold in such high regard.

I think you’ve misinterpreted my post. I don’t mean the tv deal makes the domestic competition more competitive, I mean it makes the league as a whole, as a revenue generating group, more competitive with other leagues like Norway, Sweden, wherever. 

You are right, there is no desire to make the league more competitive, it is a conscious decision to position ourselves in the market as we have. We put the OF front and centre and beg sky to pay us more for it. 

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42 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I think you’ve misinterpreted my post. I don’t mean the tv deal makes the domestic competition more competitive, I mean it makes the league as a whole, as a revenue generating group, more competitive with other leagues like Norway, Sweden, wherever. 

You are right, there is no desire to make the league more competitive, it is a conscious decision to position ourselves in the market as we have. We put the OF front and centre and beg sky to pay us more for it. 

I went off on a bit of a tangent there but I think we are making roughly the same point. 

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I noticed on BT yesterday they were advertising Angers v Auxerre as one of their live games from Ligue 1. Not PSG v Lyon, or Marseille v Lille but a game between two of the ‘smaller’ clubs put out there for the world to watch. Imagine we had a TV deal that showed a match like Aberdeen v Motherwell in the opening weeks of the season? Even writing that down in black and white, our TV deal is so horrendously skewed towards two clubs having the vast majority of live games, that it’s actually unimaginable a game like that would be shown. 


It's obviously true that the Old Firm account for the majority of games, but Motherwell v Hibs was shown on the opening weekend of last season, and Ross County v Motherwell on the opening weekend of the previous one.
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I see Ange Postecoglou is in the Times today saying that other Scottish teams need to do more in Europe.

Glasgow Celtic:

- Lost seven of fourteen games last year

- Were knocked out of three competitions

- Haven’t won a knockout tie since 2004, a date that is closer to the Chernobyl disaster than it is to the present day

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12 minutes ago, craigkillie said:


 

 


It's obviously true that the Old Firm account for the majority of games, but Motherwell v Hibs was shown on the opening weekend of last season, and Ross County v Motherwell on the opening weekend of the previous one.

 

I didn’t know that so will row back on what I said ever so slightly. Last season however, it seemed like it was just a constant stream of ‘OF away from home’ on Sky, and I think they even passed up the opportunity of showing an Edinburgh derby and a Dundee derby as well, and as everyone is well aware of didn’t take up their full quota of live games even with a semi interesting relegation battle.

If the SPFL genuinely cared about showcasing the full league there would be stipulations in the contract with regards to Sky’s promotion of the league. Sky Sports News is a channel that’s on Freeview, almost every household in the land has access to it, and sports like Boxing, F1 and Darts use it to their advantage to build excitement and drive viewers to the channels those sports are on. Apart from Old Firm week, you would hardly know Scottish football was something that Sky Sports hold the rights to. The WSL is promoted much more than the Premiership, and teams out with the OF get a token mention every now and then. On a Sunday morning when they are showing the goals from the Saturday games they still only show the Old Firm goals and just read out the rest. They only bother to get the highlights for the other games later in the day. Scottish football genuinely does deserve better. 

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3 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

I didn’t know that so will row back on what I said ever so slightly. Last season however, it seemed like it was just a constant stream of ‘OF away from home’ on Sky, and I think they even passed up the opportunity of showing an Edinburgh derby and a Dundee derby as well, and as everyone is well aware of didn’t take up their full quota of live games even with a semi interesting relegation battle.

If the SPFL genuinely cared about showcasing the full league there would be stipulations in the contract with regards to Sky’s promotion of the league. Sky Sports News is a channel that’s on Freeview, almost every household in the land has access to it, and sports like Boxing, F1 and Darts use it to their advantage to build excitement and drive viewers to the channels those sports are on. Apart from Old Firm week, you would hardly know Scottish football was something that Sky Sports hold the rights to. The WSL is promoted much more than the Premiership, and teams out with the OF get a token mention every now and then. On a Sunday morning when they are showing the goals from the Saturday games they still only show the Old Firm goals and just read out the rest. They only bother to get the highlights for the other games later in the day. Scottish football genuinely does deserve better. 

I’ve said it many times on here but the fault lies with the league and not sky. 

We allow sky to market the game anyway they please because we are just desperate to get crumbs from their table. We’ve clearly got no negotiating hand, because if we did we could turn around and say hold on, either you market our game fairly and positively or we’ll go to BT, premier sports etc.

But that just isn’t there for them. Sky will simply say the uk wide audience is only interested in two teams so we’ll pay you for broadcasting rights but this is how we’re going to do it. Sky sports don’t have any moral obligation to present Scottish football in a certain way so the league need to grow a set. But they won’t, this is the path of least resistance and keeps them ticking over. 

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33 minutes ago, G51 said:

I see Ange Postecoglou is in the Times today saying that other Scottish teams need to do more in Europe.

Glasgow Celtic:

- Lost seven of fourteen games last year

- Were knocked out of three competitions

- Haven’t won a knockout tie since 2004, a date that is closer to the Chernobyl disaster than it is to the present day

We need to apologise to celtic for not pulling our weight in Europe tbf.

 

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2 hours ago, Dons_1988 said:

I’ve said it many times on here but the fault lies with the league and not sky. 

We allow sky to market the game anyway they please because we are just desperate to get crumbs from their table. We’ve clearly got no negotiating hand, because if we did we could turn around and say hold on, either you market our game fairly and positively or we’ll go to BT, premier sports etc.

But that just isn’t there for them. Sky will simply say the uk wide audience is only interested in two teams so we’ll pay you for broadcasting rights but this is how we’re going to do it. Sky sports don’t have any moral obligation to present Scottish football in a certain way so the league need to grow a set. But they won’t, this is the path of least resistance and keeps them ticking over. 

Without knowing the details of how the deal is negotiated I can’t really say too much with any certainty, although I agree with your point overall. What I would say is that Sky have to shoulder a portion of the blame, because ultimately they are in charge of the full production. It’s not like Sky are some cowboy outfit, they are the biggest broadcaster in the country and should at the very least be upholding a standard of professionalism. There’s multiple examples of them using the wrong names, wrong badges, mistaking players etc. The SPFL should really be taking it as a given that an organisation such as Sky would strive to get these very simple details correct when awarding them a long term contract. Everything about the production is half arsed; the pundits they choose, the commentators (Crocker, Walker), there’s absolutely no attempt to do anything different that could improve the output. Crocker and Walker should have been sent packing years ago, their continued employment shows Sky arent willing to do anything other than the bare minimum.
 

Not showing their full quota of games last season should have seen the SPFL going in to any meetings with Sky with the demand that it doesn’t happen again, but I’m not sure they even care either. That was a slap in the face to the teams out with the OF, that Sky had literally paid the money to broadcast the games and couldn’t be bothered to carry out the production. 

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Just now, IrishBhoy said:

Without knowing the details of how the deal is negotiated I can’t really say too much with any certainty, although I agree with your point overall. What I would say is that Sky have to shoulder a portion of the blame, because ultimately they are in charge of the full production. It’s not like Sky are some cowboy outfit, they are the biggest broadcaster in the country and should at the very least be upholding a standard of professionalism. There’s multiple examples of them using the wrong names, wrong badges, mistaking players etc. The SPFL should really be taking it as a given that an organisation such as Sky would strive to get these very simple details correct when awarding them a long term contract. Everything about the production is half arsed; the pundits they choose, the commentators (Crocker, Walker), there’s absolutely no attempt to do anything different that could improve the output. Crocker and Walker should have been sent packing years ago, their continued employment shows Sky arent willing to do anything other than the bare minimum.
 

Not showing their full quota of games last season should have seen the SPFL going in to any meetings with Sky with the demand that it doesn’t happen again, but I’m not sure they even care either. That was a slap in the face to the teams out with the OF, that Sky had literally paid the money to broadcast the games and couldn’t be bothered to carry out the production. 

I totally agree about standards of professionalism - indeed I’ve just posted a frustration with their current live broadcast in the other thread. 

My point was more that if they want to place the OF as the main course, side dish and dessert of their SPFL coverage they will unless the league drives a different narrative. 

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34 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I totally agree about standards of professionalism - indeed I’ve just posted a frustration with their current live broadcast in the other thread. 

My point was more that if they want to place the OF as the main course, side dish and dessert of their SPFL coverage they will unless the league drives a different narrative. 

Yes, in the spirit of the age we sold any soul we may have once had, to the highest bidder.  

That highest bidder can get away with a low bid, and half arsed coverage.  That bidder is commercial in nature and is therefore utterly incentivised to show the OF in away games all the time.  It certainly has no interest whatever in a greater good.

A contract with BBC Scotland sounds like a better idea, even if it would be slightly less lucrative.  That would only work though, if our public service broadcaster was reminded that it has a public service remit.

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4 hours ago, craigkillie said:


 

 


It's obviously true that the Old Firm account for the majority of games, but Motherwell v Hibs was shown on the opening weekend of last season, and Ross County v Motherwell on the opening weekend of the previous one.

 

If you don't live in the past and look at this season's fixtures, apart from Hibs v Hearts, which will almost always be shown, all Sky games have featured either Celtic or Rangers. 

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23 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

A contract with BBC Scotland sounds like a better idea, even if it would be slightly less lucrative.  That would only work though, if our public service broadcaster was reminded that it has a public service remit.

I was about to jump on this post until I read your last line. Can you imagine what BBC Scotland would do with the Premiership rights, it’s not worth thinking about. I think after a season on BBC we would be pining for the fair and balanced coverage of Sky Sports. 

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5 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

If you don't live in the past and look at this season's fixtures, apart from Hibs v Hearts, which will almost always be shown, all Sky games have featured either Celtic or Rangers. 

 

The post I replied to said "Imagine we had a TV deal that showed a match like Aberdeen v Motherwell in the opening weeks of the season?". Those seasons were both part of the same deal and both featured those fixtures.

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