Crucial Scotland game should be a free for all
Remember watching Scotland matches on a television which had only three channels?
BBC or ITV, Bob Wilson and Arthur Montford, being patronised by Brian Moore, the dulcet tones of Jock Brown and good old
Dougie Donnelly.
Simpler times, when payper-view and subscription television would have sounded preposterous.
World Cup qualification was par for the course, watching wins against the likes of Wales, Australia and Norway on terrestrial TV are forged into the memory.
A generation or so ago the channel hopper had barely three buttons.
Now the remote control resembles something which could have been designed by NASA.
So here we are today, an era where Sky Sports is the limit for fans forking out a fortune to watch football while BT Sport, Amazon Prime and the rest aim to exploit a captive, housebound market.
Remember when small talk in the street was about the state of your football team, how’s the family and the weather?
A sign of the times is the amount of conversations about the ever-increasing sports packages we have on direct debit. It’s becoming a competition in keeping up with the Joneses, unless you’ve sourced a dodgy box.
Which brings us to next month’s game of the decade or two for Scotland against Serbia.
In these difficult times of pandemic protocols, house number and social gathering restrictions and shut pubs, showing this game free-to-air would be a welcome public service.
When a proposal was put forward last week by the Scottish Green Party for the Old Firm game to be shown on council TV it was endorsed by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and shot down by SPFL chief Neil Doncaster.
He said: “We saw the comments that the game should be given away for free and we agree with
Sky that it wouldn’t be a reasonable thing to ask when they’ve invested so much in the product and in Scottish football.
“Ultimately Sky have invested well over £125million for the next four seasons in Scottish football, and they’ve bought the rights on an exclusive basis with a view to people subscribing to their service.
“I think it’s unreasonable that Sky give those crown jewels away.”
Crown jewels? It’s a bit rich coming from a man who continues to sell off Scottish football’s family silver on the cheap while he earns a king’s ransom.
Here’s the truth. The current value of the Sky deal is worth just £1million more than the Setanta TV deal of 2008. Twelve years of inflation yet our broadcast deal has barely risen, unlike his salary.
In 2013, as chief executive of the SPL, Doncaster was paid £200,000. Last year his salary was almost double that when bonuses are factored in.
Annual inflation only appears to apply when it comes to his wages. Sky’s deal is a meagre three-percent improvement on what we had 12 years ago.
Doncaster has been a disaster. Trying to dress up sponsorship from biscuit firms and bookies won’t wash and not having any rainy day fund for the position our game finds itself in is just typical of his stewardship.
Our game’s being bailed out by small business and generous benefactors.
So don’t expect to watch Scotland against Serbia for free because Sky and Doncaster have never subscribed to the belief that football without fans is worth nothing.