High time for the myths to be dispelled and Premiership increased to 16 clubs

There is growing speculation that BT Sport, buoyed by the success of the audience for their SPFL and Betfred League Cup TV coverage, may raise their bid to £40m with a view to a monopoly of Scottish football TV coverage from 2020.

That would certainly lead to a bidding war, given that Sky Sports would not relinquish their rights to Old Firm matches without a battle.

There are the green shoots of recovery in Scottish football today. Debt is being reduced. More people per head of the population watch football here than in any other European nation. In the last decade nine clubs out with the Old Firm have won a cup.

However, it is surreal to watch pulsating, noisy competitive matches between Dundee United, Dunfermline, Falkirk and St Mirren then switching on Sportscene to watch matches in our top tier with the likes of Hamilton Accies, Partick Thistle and Ross County with so few folk there one can hear every individual voice and where there are more empty seats than a Ukip conference! Dunfermline Athletic and Dundee United have gates half the Premiership can only dream of.

Has the time not come for the Premiership to increase to 16 clubs? You can’t, say the siren voices of the Glasgow tabloids; their interest in justice having dissipated with the return of Rangers. You would reduce themarqueegamesandfrighten the TV firms away.

It is time that myth was tackled. The reality is that Scottish football clubs receive more money through the gate than from TV coverage. Were the Premiership to increase to 14 or 16, BT Sport, with sole rights, would increase from one Old Firm match to four. In Denmark, with a population similar to Scotland, their top tier has 14 clubs, TV broadcasting is worth £50m per year, the average gates are only 8,000 but more than two teams can win the flag. Here no team outwith the Old Firm has won it since 1985.

Our Premiership is a selfindulgent set-up where the difficulty is we would need clubs to renounce their self-interest, which they won’t. Pardon my schadenfreude as three of the culprits, ie Ross County, Partick Thistle and Hamilton Accies, currently peer over the abyss. Of course, they are not the real problem (even though they were willing to accept an outrageous Premiership playoff format designed to protect their second bottom member and are content for the top team in the Championship to receive half the prize money of the bottom top tier club).

Celtic have won the flag monotonously for seven seasons, and it does not suit them to have a TV deal which would increase top flight competition. They want the unhindered path to the riches of the European Champions League, where their TV deal is worth twice that of all Scotland’s TV football revenue!

It is a shame that European Union anti-competitive regulations do not extend to football.

JOHN V LLOYD Keith Place, Inverkeithing