For those who didn’t know this….

Ibrox Noise
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For those who didn’t know this….


Barely-reported a month ago to the extent even Ibrox Noise was utterly unaware of this, we felt the urge to put up a piece on it today in order to inform our readers, many of whom may not know either.

BT Sports, regular Scottish football broadcaster, has completely lost SPFL rights and Sky Sports will be exclusive carriers from next year onwards.

Following Murdoch’s finest outbidding BT, UK viewers wanting Rangers, Celtic and the wee teams are now forced categorically to subscribe to Sky Sports from next summer onwards, in a deal which smacks of retribution over Sky Sports’ loss of Champions League some years ago.

In a sense it removes choice, but equally there wasn’t much choice because one broadcaster would select particular matches while the other took on the rest.

BT Sports’ coverage of SPFL was pretty good – arguments rage about how impartial, or otherwise, some of the pundits are, but the actual investment into it was pretty good – studios pitch side, dugout interviews and the very useful thumbnail camera to show sideline activity at the same time as the action continuing on the pitch was certainly decent coverage, but as of 2020/2021 that’ll be no more and it will be exclusively for Hayley McQueen and co over at Sky to cover.

For existing Sky subscribers it is convenient, but we will expect price rises to cover it. Equally BT will lose yet more subscribers, with the only three carrots the broadcaster really still has in the UK being Champions League, Europa League and English Premier League.

For the sake of healthy competition we’d hope they hold onto all of them otherwise Sky will control a complete monopoly over UK football.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Rangers and the wee teams you mean. Will be good to see more of Hayley phwoar 👌🇬🇧

  2. Sky as usual will throw money at the top clubs and scraps to the rest, in particular Scottish football. A monopoly in anything is never good news.

  3. I am quite happy , I already subscribe to SKY and wouldn`t give money to BT to listen to Sutton , Craigan , McCoist and co. rubbish our club .The SKY pundits are bad enough .The upside to this is that these guys will be off the air.I also don`t expect a price rise off he back of this , after all they are not paying the SPFL very much for the games .

  4. Looks like we’ll have to suffer the biased Walker in every game then. Note to Sky…..Make sure it’s always an ex bear commentating on all Rangers games. It will make it more palatable to watch.

  5. Great shame – I’ve enjoyed the BT coverage and they covered a lot of our games from the Championship, even from some of the diddy grounds. Anybody taking Sutton seriously needs to have a word with themselves – he looks for an angle to get a reaction and he usually plays it very well. A bit like Craig Revell-Horwood or a pantomime villain. All part of the entertainment.

  6. I subscribe to Sky and BT. BT have just agreed that I can watch their channels on Sky for no extra cost. TV companies are willing to negotiate every time contact is due for renewal. Streaming is huge threat to TV companies.
    By way just heard Solanke is out for a month at Bournemouth. £19m for an injured player. Maybe we have been lucky.

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