Do not adjust your sets!
FAIR play to Aberdeen’s commercial bod Rob Wicks, wherever he sprang from, for telling it how it is. That £160million deal with Sky Sports to show the SPFL Premiership over five years from 2020 really isn’t all that. Sweden’s Allsvenskan is picking up £50m a season in a country where the meatball means more than the football. It is time for us to find new ways of creating a brand and promoting everything weird and wonderful about our own national obsession with a view to maximising future income.
Sky Sports are likely to stick to the tried and tested when it comes to actually covering the matches, but why not ask them to do what they’ve done with the English Premier League and dedicate an entire channel to SPFL output when the new contract kicks in. Here, in a
Sportsmail special, we put together the kind of TV schedule that might just open Pandora’s Box to a whole, new range of subscribers.
10am-11am: FOOTBALLERS DO
THE FUNNIEST THINGS — The hilarious home video show that shows Scotland’s top stars off-guard and off-the-radar through their own mobile phone footage. Check out Jason ‘Cumdog’ Cummings rearranging his flat in the best room-trashing scene since Orson Welles in
Citizen Kane. Watch Leigh Griffiths, when he’s not blanking calls from Alex McLeish, mull over human existence and the properties of ‘bendy water’ with the Flat Earth Society. Or just kick back and chill as Kyle Lafferty sends pictures of his willy to people he has followed through shopping centres.
11am-11.30am: WOULD I LIE TO
YOU? — SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster explains why everyone in Scottish football from the clubs to the police to the punters love the idea of playing two cup semi-finals at Hampden on the same day and why Murrayfield is an absolute non-starter — before everyone in Scottish football from the clubs to the police to the punters says that they, in fact, hate the idea and Murrayfield, erm, turns out to be available after all. In the second half of the show, Scotland manager Alex McLeish blames the 25 withdrawals from his latest squad on Livingston’s pitch. 11.30am-12.27pm: THE SECRET LIFE OF FOUR-YEAR-OLDS — Dave has special tickets that Peter and the boys and girls on the green team want.
Peter has special tickets that Dave and the boys and girls on the blue team want. Dave says Peter can’t have his tickets any more and Peter says he doesn’t want them anyway. Peter’s friends start singing nasty songs about Dave’s friend Steven. At this rate, no one will be sharing their jelly and ice cream at the big Christmastime party at Ibrox.
12.27pm-12.30pm: BIG-MATCH
BUILD-UP — Sky Sports bring their trademark sense of occasion to the weekend’s big SPL Scotch Premier Division match-up. Star analyst Paul Merson will be in the stadium. Providing he knows which city the home team play in. Or even which country.
12.30pm-2.15pm: THE BIG
MATCH — Yep, the boring bit. The actual football. One of the Old Firm travel to Dundee City or Patrick Whistle or some other diddy team. Hayley McQueen will be on hand to respond to her usual torrent of tweets on SFA conspiracy, Resolution 12 and being a Sevco apologist. 2.15pm-2.16pm: BIG-MATCH ANALYSIS — Kris Boyd, head down and talking ten to the dozen, rattles through the key events in jig-time. Well, you’ll be keen to switch over to Sky Sports Premier League to catch up on the in-depth, two-hour build-up to Huddersfield v Burnley, won’t you? Look on the bright side. At least you don’t have to listen to Stephen Craigan prattling away on BT Sport any longer.
2.16pm-3.30pm: DIY SOS, THE
BIG BUILD — Join SFA office bearers Ian Maxwell, Alan McRae and Rod Petrie as they don their hard hats and bring in Nick Knowles and the team to work their magic on Hampden Park. Ian plucked an airy-fairy plan out of the air months ago to rebuild the old ground along the lines of Stuttgart’s stadium, but the £80m project cost has resulted in everyone trying to avoid mentioning it ever again. Here, Nick, Mark, Chris and Julian cobble something together with some MDF and a few bits of decking. Not that different from the original rebuild back in 1999, in truth. Minus the £63m costs, crippling debts, government bail-out and fraud squad investigation.
3.30pm-4.30pm: ONE BORN
EVERY MINUTE — Step inside the SFA marketing department as they explain how they get away with charging £30 plus for Israel and Albania at home, £80 for a child’s Scotland strip and a £50 membership fee for a racket called the Scotland Supporters’ Club that does little more than buy you a spot near the front of a ‘queue’ for match tickets almost nobody wants. PT Barnum said it. One born every minute, right enough. 4.30pm-5.30pm: FLOG IT! — Rangers director of football Mark Allen takes Pedro Caixinha’s star signings Eduardo Herrera and Carlos Pena to auction at a baronial castle in Hertfordshire and returns to the Hummel Training Centre with a fur coat, an antique teaspoon and a stuffed moosehead for the players’ canteen.
6pm-7pm: I’M SORRY, I HAVEN’T
A CLUE — In a one-off TV twist on a radio institution, SFA refereeing chief John Fleming writes to the International Football Association Board to ask them what a red card actually is because no one at Hampden has the faintest idea any longer. In exclusive behind-thescenes footage, Fleming pulls together a three-man panel of Stephen Fry, Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor to examine video evidence of Alfredo Morelos removing Scott McKenna’s tonsils with his studs and sees them conclude there is no proof of ‘excessive force or brutality’. 7pm-9pm: COME DINE WITH ME — Four SPFL stars past and present show their love of good food by competing for £1,000 of betting vouchers from the only firms left sponsoring top-level Scottish football. Gasp as Carlos Pena turns up late at his own dinner party in his training kit with a massive cairry-oot and pees in the fish tank. Chortle as Jason Cummings reprises his party trick of volleying a fillet steak across the room before hurling the telly out the window and thrill as Callum Paterson matches each course to his favourite flavour of Mad Dog 20/20. Just step away from the worktop when Kirk Broadfoot is taking the Eggs Benedict out of the microwave.
9pm-10pm: EASTENDERS — War breaks out as Brendan and Peter fall out over money, Moussa turns on Brendan after accusing him of breaking promises and Dedryck allegedly downs tools and refuses to work for the family business as they see some ragtag mob from Greece snatch £30m away from under their noses. It’s all forgotten, though, as a hard-fought goalless draw at Livingston takes them back to the top of the pile in time for a show of unity against their ‘enemies’ at the company AGM with an east end knees-up round the old Joanna in the Springfield Vaults and a curry afterwards. No Chinese. There will be no talk of China. Or offers from clubs there. Or urging your star striker to go there. Ever. Again. 10pm-7am: LATE-NIGHT CASINO — Aberdeen director Duncan Skinner and former Annan Athletic chairman Henry McClelland take you through the wee small hours, looking at all the different ways you can bet on your own team getting pumped. With special guest Ian Black.