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New kids on the block, but BT Sport and Sutton are now go-to guys for Scottish football
BEFORE becoming the no-nonsense voice of BT Sport, Chris Sutton had a reputation. Journalists found the former Celtic striker a tricky man to interview.
‘We used to have dialogue in the Celtic dressing room,’ he grins. ‘We would see who could say the least amount of words in an interview.
‘I didn’t want to give you lot any fuel for the fire back then...’
Fast forward to the present day and Sutton has become a fireman’s worst nightmare.
A verbal arsonist lobbing hand grenades into the heart of Scottish football. Ronny Deila and Mark Warburton felt the heat of his opinions, referees have tried — and failed — to douse his flame and Rangers legend Derek Johnstone was publicly scorched live on air during a radio show.
Some Rangers fans think it’s worth the effort — but Sutton has become a hard man to ignore.
His abrasive style has helped make BT Sport the raucous upstarts of Scottish football broadcasting. Where Sky Sports stand accused of treating the SPFL like an embarrassing date with chronic halitosis, BT Sport arrived in 2013 bearing chocolates and flowers, boosting the confidence of a footballing wallflower with a glossy makeover.
Between them BT and Sky Sports currently shell out around £22million a year to show 60 live SPFL games. BT Sport also have exclusive rights to the Betfred League Cup. The sums paid are a tiny fraction of the £5billion, three-year contract agreed with the English Premier League and when the deal comes up for re-negotiation next year, Scottish clubs will ask for more. They always do.
Yet BT Sport have impressed the chairmen with their promotion of the product. The average live SPFL game involves 15 cameras, 75 production staff, 3,500 metres of cable, 75 pies, 50 hours of editing and 30 hours of filming.
The verbal jousts between Sutton and Motherwell coach Stephen Craigan have become essential viewing. Granted behindthe-scenes access to the pre-production planning for Hamilton’s 1-0 win over Aberdeen on Tuesday, Sportsmail watched as Craigan plays the Judy to Sutton’s Punch; Motherwell’s decision to sack Mark McGhee earning the broadcast equivalent of a truncheon to the head.
‘With Chris, what you see is what you get,’ says co-commentator Derek Rae, a cerebral veteran of sports broadcasting. ‘He can be slightly cantankerous at times. He is certainly opinionated. But he has got the credibility having played at a very high level, which I think is important.’
Ex-players now plying their trade in the media can be a mixed bag. Some play a safety-first game, ducking hospital passes to avoid upsetting pals in the game. Sutton says it as he played it.
ABRASIVE and blunt, he gets wired in. Reclining at the back of a BT make-up bus at New Douglas Park, he offers no apologies for upsetting people.
‘Everyone has their own style,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘I just say things as openly and plainly as possible. I just say what I think.
‘I have a link to Celtic because I played there for a long time. But I say what I think about Celtic, as well.
‘I said what I thought about the previous manager Ronny Deila. I criticised Ronny Deila and he took it okay. Ultimately, I was right.
‘I was also the first to flag up concerns about Mark Warburton and, though you won’t get many Rangers fans saying nice things about me, most would now agree what I said was right.
‘Because I’m a former Celtic player some take umbrage at what I say. But that doesn’t bother me. You just have to be true to yourself.’
Oscar Wilde observed that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about. BT Sport have become a regular topic of conversation.
A pre-Christmas spat between Sutton and Craigan over the Hearts appointment of Ian Cathro became a social-media sensation. Producers have barely missed an open goal since — encouraging Sutton and his Northern Irish sparring partner to climb in the ring at every opportunity.
Addressing an obvious suspicion, Sutton insists: ‘We don’t contrive to have arguments. They just materialise. But we are told to speak our mind — which is the best way.
‘We don’t all sit there like nodding dogs all the time. There are always contentious issues.
‘People watch games and have their own opinions and see things differently. There is no point getting too upset about it.
‘We all get things right, we all get them wrong. And if you get it wrong? Well, say so.’
There’s a pantomime element to it all sometimes. Yet, the pundit wars have a serious end. By paying billions to secure rights to the UEFA Champions League, the English Premier League and SPFL, BT hope to persuade broadband customers Sky are no longer the only game in town.
Rupert Murdoch still employs full-time journalists in Scotland and can point to years of investment in the national game. But, right now, the perception is BT are winning the war.
‘What we are trying to do here at BT is promote the game in the best way possible,’ adds Sutton. ‘We are trying to entertain and give the game a leg up. We all passionately try to promote Scottish football.
‘I defend Scottish football when I feel it needs to be defended and praise it when it needs to be praised. Scottish football was good to me — but on the other side I can be pretty truthful about it when I need to be.’
The truth can be a brutal business. It can put friendships at risk.
Yet Sutton adds: ‘You are either on this side as a pundit. Or you are not. You can’t have a foot in both camps. That is a problem.
‘I have friends in the game, but I don’t worry too much about that.
‘I work on the premise that if I say something about someone and I meet them in the street, would I run to the other side? Well, no I wouldn’t.
‘What I say I say to people’s faces. I don’t just rock up and
shoot from the hip for the sake of it. I try and think about things.’
Master of ceremonies is fresh-faced presenter Darrell Currie. Having cut his teeth at setanta and esPN, the 34-year-old from Bearsden is as much a referee as a host at times, but offers no complaints: ‘I love that. I think you know with the pundits we have they like an opinion.
‘From my point of view, that is absolutely brilliant. It gets quite fiery and heated at times and that is genuine.
‘We talk ahead of the games but the guys know the subjects. I have notes here and they don’t know what I am going to ask them about those subjects.
‘I don’t think it is ever contrived. We obviously film some bits before we go on, which is obviously not live, but most of the debates we do before, during and after games are not contrived at all. It is passion. We are often arguing about these things after the game, but in the best way.’
When the rutting stops on the pundits’ gantry, match commentator rae turns to copious colour-coded notes written in tiny type on every player.
Now in his 32nd year as a broadcaster, rae started with a hospital radio station in aberdeen before replacing the legendary David Francey at radio scotland at the age of 19.
a former languages student, some of the 49-year-old’s statistical gems go down better with his co-analyst than others.
‘You have got to be on your toes when you work with Chris sutton,’ he laughs. ‘that is the one thing we have all learned.
‘In broadcasting, you have to adapt to the ex-players you are working with. they all have their own personalities. I’ve been lucky enough to work with countless ex-players over the years.
‘they all bring something different and unique. Chris says what is on his mind.’
If Bt sport was merely a platform for shock-jocks, the suspicion is rae would want nothing to do with it.
‘When we started in 2013, one of the things we said was that, although you can’t control everything in television, we all had a passion for scottish football,’ he adds.
‘It can be easy to find the negative angle to everything. But there is a market for talking to scottish football fans in the way they do at home with their friends and in pubs and other places. Hopefully we do that.’
BT Sport is your home of unmissable live football from the SPFL and BetFred League Cup. Visit btsport.com for more info.