Well, it's been another interminably long break since my last post, but a combination of illness and disillusionment with the modern game prompted that decision, so my schedule will be very ad-hoc from this point onwards.
Moving onto
the topic in question and it's yet again another situation where the
'big' clubs are given preferential treatment over the rest of the
league, what am I referring to? Live SKY games of course.
We've all
heard about the massive amount of money that's going to be given to
clubs based on TV rights, yet some teams are given virtually no
coverage by SKY – at least in comparison to the 'big boys'.
This season
alone (and discounting ESPN covered games), there is a huge
difference between the teams with the table looking like this:
Team Live
Games Shown
Liverpool 16
Man
City 14
Spurs 14
Arsenal 13
Man
Utd 13
Chelsea 10
Everton 10
Newcastle 10
Aston
Villa 9
Sunderland 9
West
Ham 9
West
Brom 7
Fulham 6
QPR 6
Southampton 6
Swansea 6
Norwich 5
Wigan 5
Reading 4
Stoke 4
So great
news if you're a Liverpool supporter, (or any of the clubs pushing
for a top six finish), not so great news if you're a Reading or Stoke
fan (or a side nearer the bottom end of the table).
What's
somewhat interesting about this list is that in many ways it's very
similar to the stature that most fans hold towards the clubs, and
although Man Utd would normally be at the top, they're only 3 games
away from Liverpool in pole position.
Now the
truly frustrating part about this situation is that fans of ALL
premier league clubs pay the same price to view SKY Sports as each
other, yet some fans get triple the amount of their teams games shown
for their money than others do (4 times more in a Reading/Stoke vs
Liverpool comparison).
I can accept
that many neutral fans would rather watch Man Utd vs Arsenal than
they would Wigan vs Swansea, but the gap between the amount of games
shown is just ridiculous in some cases and in my honest opinion –
needs changing.
In a more
even distribution, each team would have had 8 or 9 games shown so far
and this certainly doesn't stop the 'big' games from being shown
either. It's simply a case of looking at the fixture list, selecting
the key 'big' games first of all (schedule changes accepted), and
then working out what's left and how best to give the teams a fair
and interesting TV run.
And whilst
I'm on the subject, some of the selections need attention in the
process. It's all well and good showing Chelsea vs Man City and QPR
vs Reading as the Sunday games, but this is also somewhat unfair on
the 'smaller' clubs as you only get to watch them against similarly
placed teams and not the 'big' clubs.
I'm going to
stop there because I'm in danger of making this come across as
nothing more than a petulant whine from a Norwich fan dissatisfied
with the live games offered this season, but the truth is that I AM
dissatisfied with the situation (to the point where I cancelled my
SKY Sports subscription some months ago), and it's just one more
example of how the league panders to the top teams whilst the rest of
us seem to be there to simply 'make up the numbers'....
