They Don't Care About Us (Football Association vs Sky)

Member Name: utero

Product:	Football Association vs Sky
Date:	12/08/05 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Coverage

Disadvantages: Too much money, no even distribution of wealth, becoming less competitive every season

Since the inception of the Premier League we’ve seen football evolve in this country. At first it was an exciting venture and a quite competitive league, the coverage by Sky was excellent and you generally got a good sense of the atmosphere, the passion, the excitement. But now football is in danger of losing its most important asset – the fans.

A large part of this is due to the revenue generated by the TV deal the premier league has with Sky Television. It’s now a case of what Sky wants to do to fill it’s schedule, there doesn’t appear to be much though given to the fans and the FA seem quite happy to sit back and not do anything. My team Norwich City regained their place in the top division last season. I remember the last time we were there, many teams could compete without having to spend vast seven figure sums on players. They could take players from lower leagues and the majority of them would be a success. This would cascade money down to the lower leagues and allow them to invest more in youth and bring players through. That doesn’t happen now with the most gifted youth already being bought at a young age by the big clubs. Sky has created a league that has glamour and a great marketing gimmick. However their supply of riches to the clubs is pretty false. The bigger the club in the league, the more money they will get. The money they have means they can have the better players. This just means that every year you get the same clubs competing at the top, eventually we’ll end up like the Scottish league where there’s not real competition apart from the one where you may finish third behind Celtic or Rangers.

I certainly noticed this last season, we didn’t survive and this is pretty much down to not having the finances to compete in the division. There is a real step-up in quality from the Championship to the Premiership and to have a small chance you’re looking at an £8M spend minimum just on transfer fees alone. This doesn’t take into account the wages that the players command. Once that’s factored in then you’re left with a big risk, should you go down then you might struggle to keep afloat.

I love Sky’s coverage, it’s far better than the BBC but the FA needs to start addressing what is becoming a cancer on the game. For starters someone needs to point out to Sky that supporters should be considered whenever scheduling games. Last season we were shown on a Monday night against Man City, you’re talking a very long journey from Norwich on the best of days. Do it on a weekend and you’ll be ok but moving it to a Monday night meant that a lot of supporters had to take two days off to see 90-minutes of football. The same thing happened with the return fixture. This season our home game against Plymouth has been selected for live coverage. The only problem is that Plymouth fans are expected to be a Carrow Road in time for a 12.45 kick-off. That’s a big ask for those away fans and I really do feel for them. You could try contacting Sky about it but you won’t get anywhere and they never listen.

It is now muted that the next TV deal with Sky will be more open. They won’t hold exclusive rights to everything in the Premier League. As a result the money to clubs will be reduced. Personally I can only see this being a good thing. For far too long clubs have overspent with the reliance of being in the Premier League. This may be a step in the right direction to giving a little bit more balance and a better playing field. In all honesty watching the Premier League on TV is far more fun than being in the actual league. Last season I visited large stadiums that struggled to get filled and that’s pretty sad. It’s no wonder that the stock of the Championship is rising, it’s a more competitive league and you can honestly say that there is no Chelsea in the league in terms of strength. Anyone can beat anyone on their day and generally the race to the champions usually goes right up to the final month.

You don’t hear much coming from the FA about the state of the game. That’s because they’re probably happy taking their cut from the Sky money. After all this is the association which sees fit to pay Sven £4M a year and get some dull football in return despite having a wealth of talent to choose from.

In an ideal future you will see the Premier League becoming like it was back in the early nineties. You had your big teams like the Arsenals and the Man Utd’s. But they were always beatable, there was always a chance and you would always see teams battling it out. All we want to see back in the game is competition, I’d love to see teams come up from the championship and have a realistic chance of ending in the top ten without having spent millions on doing it.

So come on the FA, give up yourself unto the moment – The time is now!

Summary: Where there is money, there is power, the power belongs to those in TV