English football on television

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English football (soccer) has been screened on television since 1937, and since the establishment of the Premier League in 1992, it has become a very lucrative industry. As of the 2007-08 season, television rights for the 20-team Premier League are valued at close to £1bn each season. Based on July 2007 exchange rates, this is only marginally less than what American football's 32-team NFL receives from its TV contracts.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Early years

The BBC started its television service in 1936, although it was nearly a year before the very first televised match of football was screened – a specially-arranged friendly match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury on September 16, 1937.[1] This was followed by the first international match, between England and Scotland on April 9, 1938, and the first televised FA Cup final followed soon after, on April 30 the same year, between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End.[2]

However, coverage of football television did not expand and for the next two decades the only matches screened were FA Cup finals and the odd England v. Scotland match. The first FA Cup tie other than the final to be shown was a fifth round match between Charlton Athletic and Blackburn Rovers on February 8, 1947, but matches were sparing and only games in London could be broadcast, for technical reasons.[3]

[edit] The dawn of regular coverage

The advent of floodlighting led to the creation of the European Cup, designed as a midweek cup competition for the champions of European nations, in 1955. The newly formed British television station ITV saw televised football as an ideal way of gaining a share of the audience from their only rival broadcaster, the BBC. The BBC meanwhile, started showing brief highlights of matches (with a maximum of five minutes) on its Saturday Sport Special programme from 10 September 1955, until its cancellation in 1963. The first games featured were both from Division One - Luton Town v Newcastle United and Charlton Athletic v Everton, Kenneth Wolstenholme and Cliff Michelmore were the commentators.[4]

An early attempt at live league football was made in 1960-61, when ITV agreed a deal worth £150,000 with the Football League to screen 26 matches; the very first live league match was on Saturday September 10, 1960 between Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers at Bloomfield Road. The match kicked off at 6:50pm with live coverage starting at 7:30 under the title The Big Game. A major blow to the TV moguls was the absence of big box office draw Stanley Matthews through injury, and the game ended 1-0 in Bolton's favour in front of a half-empty stadium.[5]

However ITV withdrew from the deal after first Arsenal and then Tottenham Hotspur refused them permission to shoot at their matches against Newcastle United and Aston Villa respectively, and the Football League demanded a dramatic increase in player appearance payments.[3] ITV showed the Nat King Cole Show instead, while ironically both matches received highlights coverage from the BBC on Sports Special.

However ITV moved again into football, albeit tentatively, in 1962 when Anglia Television launched Match of the Week, which showed highlights of matches from around East Anglia. The first match shown was Ipswich Town's 3-2 defeat at the hands of Wolves at Portman Road on September 22, 1962.[6] Tyne Tees Television in the North East of England began broadcasting local matches soon after under the title Shoot. League football was soon to gain a nationwide audience once more. In 1964, the BBC introduced Match of the Day - initially broadcast on the new BBC2. The first match was Liverpool's 3-2 victory over Arsenal at Anfield on 22 August, and the estimated audience of 20,000 was considerably less than the number of paying customers at the ground. At the time BBC2 could only be received in the London area, although by the end of Match Of The Day's first season it could be sampled in the Midlands. The programme transferred to BBC1 in the wake of England's 1966 World Cup win and at last could be received by television viewers across the UK.

[edit] The World Cup

There was live coverage of World Cup football on UK screens in 1954 and 1958 - however only selected matches were available. In 1954, Kenneth Wolstenholme provided commentary on the few televised matches for BBC from Switzerland - including the quarter-final between Hungary and Brazil. A thunderstorm over the Alps cut off the picture and many irate viewers wrote in to complain that the BBC had pulled the plug.[7] The 1958 tournament in Sweden saw a greater range of matches thanks to the new Eurovision Network; the BBC and ITV both screened matches, although the networks had to overcome opposition to the coverage from the Scottish FA, who were worried that attendances at Junior football matches may be hit.[8] The 1962 World Cup in Chile was covered in delayed form by the BBC with film having to be carried by air via the United States back to Britain. Matches were generally seen three days after they were played, though every match was covered by the BBC with commentary.

With intercontinental communications satellites in their infancy and videotape a new advance, the first tournament to gain widespread international live coverage was the 1966 tournament, which was held in England. The tournament, which England won, increased the popularity of the sport. With more football viewers than ever, Match of the Day thrived - switching from BBC Two to BBC One to reach a wider audience. ITV's regional coverage had also expanded during this period with London weekend company ATV launching Star Soccer in October 1965, Southern Television's Southern Soccer and ABC's World of Soccer also began to appear regularly in the TV Times Sunday schedules. London Weekend Television's The Big Match started in 1968, and eventually the entire ITV network's football coverage would be broadcast under its title.

[edit] Rise of live League coverage

The demand for football grew through the 1970s and early 1980s, and the decision to start screening live league matches was almost inevitable; a deal was struck for the start of the 1983-84 season and the first live league match since 1960 was screened on ITV, between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest, on October 2, 1983. Spurs would also feature in the BBC's first live league match at Manchester United on a Friday night a few weeks later.

By the late 1980s the value of live TV coverage had rocketed; while a two-year contract for rights in 1983 had cost just £5.2m, the four-year contract exclusively landed by ITV in 1988 cost £44m, a fourfold increase per year. There was now a situation where live football was on TV almost every Sunday afternoon from about November onwards, as ITV screened top-flight football most weeks and the BBC had the rights to the FA Cup that occupied other weekends.

With top flight football proving particularly lucrative, in 1992 the clubs of the Football League First Division voted to quit the league en masse and set up their own league, the Premier League. They eventually opted to agree a deal with Sky Sports rather than ITV or the BBC, meaning leading live league football was no longer available on terrestrial television (although matches from the First Division (previously Second Division) continued to be shown for a time by ITV).

[edit] Football on television today

Fans watch an England international in HDTV in a cinema, 2006
Fans watch an England international in HDTV in a cinema, 2006

Coverage of Premier League now dominates football on English television, especially financially; the contracts agreed between the league and broadcasters BSkyB in 1992 and 1997 were worth £191.5m and £670m respectively. However, the European Union objected to what it saw as a monopoly on television rights and demanded the 2007 contract be split into separate packages; eventually Sky won four of the six available packages, with the other two were taken by Setanta Sports.

When Sky won the rights, it was the first time live football had been regularly screened (usually Sundays and Mondays in the early years) throughout the season, as previous restrictions on the number of games had meant ITV had tended to begin to show matches (bar the odd early-season glamour game) in October or November and focus on the title run-in.

See also: Premier League media coverage

[edit] The future

On November 6, 2007 it was announced that Sky Sports and the BBC will show live Football League matches in England and Wales from the 2009-2010 season. [9] 10 live Football League Championship matches will be shown on BBC TV meaning live league football will return to British terrestrial television for the first time since 2002.

The BBC holds terrestrial UK rights to Premier League highlights through 2010 on Match of the Day.

[edit] Kickoff times

The Premier League is virtually unique in domestic football in Europe in its agreement over kick-off times. In an agreement with the Football Association, it does not allow live TV broadcasts or the release of clips on mobile phones at the traditional English kick-off time (Saturday 3pm); Scottish league games are also not televised during the same window (2:45-5:15). It is claimed that this ensures that fans still attend lower league games. However, these broadcasting restrictions can be circumvented to some extent either by subscribing to overseas satellite broadcasters (Setanta broadcasts a live game to its viewers in Ireland; thus creating somewhat of a grey market), or through various streaming networks on the internet. Also, live radio broadcasts are permitted, both nationally and locally; these may be simulcast on the internet, depending on the broadcaster. In recent years, Sky Sports has shown 3:00 games on tape delay through the Football First show, either in full or as extended highlights. Live 3:00 games have sometimes aired on non-Saturday holidays.

The Premier League and Sky maintain that whilst grey market viewing of games is not illegal on the part of the viewer, it is illegal for anyone (such as a public house) to make such services openly available. This has in the past lead to heavy fines for public houses in the United Kingdom which have shown 3:00 games in their establishments. More recently, the legality of such fines has been disputed, and a number of Crown Court cases have been reported in which publicans successfully challenged the Premier League's position.[10]

In any event, each weekend, as many as five Premier League games kick-off at other times of day for the purpose of being televised. All of them air live either on Sky or Setanta. The main kick-off times for TV games are 12:45 and 5:15pm on Saturdays, 1:30 and 4:00pm on Sundays, and 8:00pm on Mondays. Additional Sunday games may kick-off before 1:30 or at 3:00 as circumstances warrant, such as to minimize fixture congestion for teams competing in Europe (teams who played a UEFA Cup match on the previous Thursday will normally play on Sunday, whether the match is televised or not). Generally, very few local rivalry games will kick-off at 5:15 on Saturday or 4:00 on Sunday to minimize the potential for crowd trouble. Many police departments favour earlier starts for these games because they would occur soon after pubs open, reducing the chance for alcohol to be consumed before the game.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Happened on this day - 16 September. BBC Sport. Retrieved on August 22, 2006.
  2. ^ The History of the BBC: The First Television Era (2006). Retrieved on August 22.
  3. ^ a b Goalmouths - TV's Voices of Football. Off The Telly.
  4. ^ Martyn Smith. Match Of The Day 40th Anniversary, pp.10-11. 
  5. ^ Gary Imlach. My Father and Other Working-Class Football Heroes, pp.152-153. 
  6. ^ John Bourn. History of football on ITV. Note that the reference says Match of the Week started in 1963; however according to Soccerbase, Ipswich's 3-2 loss to Wolves actually occurred in 1962.
  7. ^ Kenneth Wolstenholme. 50 Sporting Years And It's Still Not All Over, pp.113-118. 
  8. ^ Gary Imlach. My Father and Other Working-Class Football Heroes, pp.96-109. 
  9. ^ Football League. "FOOTBALL LEAGUE AGREES HISTORIC DEAL WITH SKY SPORTS AND BBC". 
  10. ^ Barrie Clement. "Pubs win the right to show football on Saturday afternoons", The Independent, 12 April 2006. Retrieved on 2006-08-08. 

[edit] References