Sky’s grovelling apology to furious Hammers
SKY SPORTS issued an astonishing apology to West Ham owners David Sullivan and David Gold yesterday on football discussion programme Sunday Supplement following a legal threat from the club. Sportsmail revealed on Friday that West Ham had sent a legal letter to the broadcaster which complained about numerous alleged inaccuracies by journalists when discussing the club’s finances and on-field performances. One journalist referred to ‘hands in the till’ at West
Ham, which particularly upset the club. Sky Sports spent much of last week negotiating with West Ham about how to deal with the complaint, which Sky staff described as unprecedented. West Ham also sent legal letters to two of the three
guests who appeared on the show on January 26 and Jacqui Oatley, who recently took over as host from Neil Ashton. Oatley was not on the show yesterday due to a prior engagement covering darts for ITV, leaving stand-in Geoff Shreeves to address the issue. The programme began with a highly unusual 90-second monologue from Shreeves, in which Sky Sports apologised for ‘any factual inaccuracies made on the programme’ and went into extraordinary detail about Sullivan and Gold’s level of investment in West Ham and previous club Birmingham City. West Ham were heavily involved in scripting Sky’s apology after making a series of demands last week. In addition to one guest’s reference to a culture at the club whereby everyone had their ‘hands in the till’, which Sky apologised for specifically, the club objected to criticisms of a perceived lack of investment in the squad. West Ham have also demanded public the journalists apologies involved, from some which of have not been forthcoming, but they now regard the issue with Sky as closed. That will come as a relief to the Premier League, who were kept informed of developments last week due to the delicate nature of a potential legal row between one of their clubs and the main domestic TV rights holder. Shreeves said at the start of yesterday’s programme: ‘Recently published accounts show that West Ham have invested heavily in the squad since their move to the London Stadium, with a net spend of £214million in the last four years including the club record signing Sebastien Haller. ‘They’ve spent over £1.5m on scouts over the last year and also invested £10m in the redevelopment of the training grounds at Rush Green and Chadwell Heath. ‘In response to claims that the reappointment of Stuart Pearce was vetoed by the board, the club say this isn’t true. During the discussion it was remarked that the club have a culture of “everyone’s got their hands in the till”. This was a reference to the level of commitment of some players and managers, and was not a suggestion of any illegality in any way. We apologise if this wasn’t made clear.’