Quality football programming is dead. Money talks. The BBC, despite risking heavy losses, made a £40m bid to keep the Premiership highlights rights, but ITV, backed by the promise of multi-million pound business sponsors, have won it with a £61m bid. FIFA may be the only place you'll be able to hear Motty and Lawro commentating on football as of July 1st 2001. Its just a damn shame that the cornerstone of footy fans in the UK, Match Of The Day, has been destroyed by the greed of 20 Premiership chairmen. For shame.

Money talks now!
what a pity.
The BBC have gone from bad to worse!
First they showed all the matches live(it was quite a while ago though)and now nothing.
For me it's irritating coz I live in the netherlands and I'm irish so I like to watch BBC which we can get here in holland.
I used to watch MOTD every saturday evening(even though it was quite late coz of the time difference)and now there is nothing.
Damn ITV!!

how do you think you get to view good football in the first place. Money from sponsorship brings the best players. The best players enable more competition and enable teams like Man Utd. , Chelsea, and Arsenal to compete in the continent. Dont be surprised if the commentating crew don't follow the programme to ITV.

Like everything else, you'll grow accustom to ITV's coverage and forget you were ever loyal to the BBC. I bet you have grown accustom to seeing teams change their kit every six months.

I think it's a ****ing disgrace. Myself, I'm glad that NTL didn't get the rights, otherwise us Welsh would never be able to watch Premiership games...
Everything is all about money I'm afraid...

MOTD disappearing after over 35 years of service. Someone get a black coffin with a union jack on it - a national institution is dead http://www.soccergaming.com/ubb/frown.gif

come on its not the end of the world! MOTD was getting abit stale. Maybe ITV will do for Premiership highlights what C4 did for Cricket. I hope they have a longer programme with more main matches and on at 8:00pm or something. Also why dont they introduce some programmes like the fantastic Soccer AM?

ITV's Euro 2000 coverage has shown that they are quite simply second best. How many times during their Champions League coverage due you hear nonsensical commentary (Sample: "Anelka! I choose you! Real's Team Rooooooocket!!!"), dull half-time chat based on sycophancy (the three England managers in the England-Portugal game seemed to spend most of the time saying how much worse/different the style of play was to when they were managing, just to remind you that they were 'THREE FORMER ENGLAND MANAGERS' as ITV's press blurb stated), and the final, most sickening thing, commentators talking up boring games to ensure you 'come back after the break' and keep audience share high. Ron Atkinson is just annoying, and rarely has anything interesting to say, Clive Tyldesley has lost his way in the past couple of years, while Drury makes up for his lack of knowledge by babbling complete drivel in breaks in play. The BBC have got to win back the FA rights (England games, FA Cup, Worthington Cup, Football League) when they come up in September to save us from the barrage of commercialism that has infiltrated and finally brought down TV football.

Ive also just been reading that BBC will produce NTLs PPV matches so Gary, Motty, Alan and Mark will still ne on our screens regually. NTLs PPV channel will be on Sky and On, Digital as well as NTL digital but the prices will be about £10 per game.
And remember that BBC still have rights to highlights for some of Englands games and the FA CUP. They can also buy up rights to UEFA cup games or rename Football Focus to MOTD. So in all MOTD is not dead at all! But what will ITVS version of MOTD been called? Any thoughts?

The BBC have no highlights for England games - only the FA Cup. And quite frankly, they can rename 'Eastenders' to Match of the Day, but it will never be the same without the PRemiership highlights. I will not be paying £100 to install Digital TV, then £10 per game, just to see Motty doing what he does best. My guess is that he must now move to ITV, at which I will shake my head slowly and shed a tear.

I feared this, though I didn't think it was announced until tomorrow. I remember when ITV won the F1, and how they ruined that. At least MoTD will be on in Scotland now, and at a decent time (and with Des). Sigh, BBC coverage is so much better though - if I hear Ron "eyebrows" Atkinson or the other one ever again I swear I'll scream!(Though I like Peter Brackley)

Pay-Per-View - ****ty Yank invention!
Why the hell are they introducing it to football matches? Sky did it with the boxing cos they were greedy. Now they and NTL (bastards) are on about pay-per-view for the football next season...
It's total shambles - I think I'll cancel my subscription...

One thing that maddens me is that some countries show some Premier League matches for free! Bloody rip-off over here!!!

As for Premiership chairmen - they are getting greedier and greedier every year. All they think about is money and couldn't give a **** about the armchair supporters.

As for ITV - I must say I'm not impressed with their standard of commentary, even though Big Ron sometimes makes me laugh with his usual comments. But generally he is annoying, while Tyldesley (a BBC reject) dented his popularity with the Anelka Pokémon thing. Drury is just utter crap. If ITV had decent commentary, then it would be worth watching!

Old people from UK out there - ITV nearly did get POTD once in the story dubbed "Snatch Of The Day" - after 20 odd years, it seems as though, in a way, they've done just that.
Also the Beeb didn't show the FA Cup - ITV and Sky had it. Looks like football on BBC has completely disappeared.

We pay enough as it is with TV licences and subscriptions to worthless TV packages, but this new TV deal has just blown televised football out of proportion. Where's the authorities to step in I wonder?

Let me get this straight, the only football action on saturday was a two hour highlight show and now you are disappointed that it will be gone?

I can't believe the Englishman put up with that arrangement as long as they did! I mean imagine if in USA NFL was a two hour highlight show for most games, I think they'd have a revolution or something, people would be strung up on light poles if they tried to pull something like that...

The BBC had very little they could do - they doubled their previous bid, which as I said risked putting them millions of pounds into the red, but unfortunately Carlsberg and other companies have put up eight-figure sums to take the coverage over to ITV.

Well id have to say that it is good for a change and I hope ITV will bring a fresh look to highlights maybe at an earlier time. But the worst thing is ITV love Man Utd even more than BBC so its Man United as one of the main matches every week as normall! But maybe ITV would put Division 1,2 and 3 goals on the programme as well which would be good. Well at least NTL didnt win the main rights! I think it is the best thing that, the main matches stay on Sky.

Ste

The POTD BBC graphics patch is still on the way of course!

Very stupid of the premiership teams. Now the football will only be shown on a closed british circuit, meaning the rest of europe doesnt see their competition anymore, meaning that players from 'the continent' also cant see it anymore and dont choose to play in England anymore, meaning a lower level of skill, meaning less entermaint, meaning less interest of the press, meaning etc. etc. etc......

I remember a story once told to me by an Australian friend, over there the rugby union sold the rights to a closed TV circuit, it went from sport no. 1 to nothing....... But hey, the money was good for two years! Narrow minded money thinking will lead to the destruction of professional football also.

Dead right Polish!!!
I reckon Paris would be on fire if they did that kind of thing in France!
But then again, there isn't that much money involved in soccer in France but maybe it is just as well after all.

Two hour highlight show? We wish! MOTD was 45 minutes long, comprising 'extended' highights of three games, then brief highlights of two more, followed by the goals from all the others, and it went out at 22:30 on a Saturday, with a repeat at 6:50 the next morning, putting it out of the reach of many kids who love football. Midweek matches were covered with items in BBC News bulletins, but there were no highlights - goals in midweek matches were shown in a magazine programme on Saturday. This has been the arrangement since 1992 when Sky Sports, Fox's UK arm, spent £400M on the rights to the breakaway top division.

The new packages of highlights are even more limited. ITV can only show highlights from three games on its Saturday show, with all other games being shown in a three-minute goals section. The Sunday programme will be allowed to show highlights of two games, plus goals from all other games that weekend.

The only live TV football available free-to-air without having to splash out £35 a month on a digital or cable hook-up is the second choice of FA Cup matches, major tournaments like Euro 2000 and World Cups, and Champions League games (the number of which is being halved next season at the request of OnDigital).

The reason why there is no protest is because there is nothing we can do. We can protest as much as we like - the fact is that the deals are signed and all we can do is vote with our feet and refuse to sign up for these Pay-TV companies. Unfortunately, most people find the choice between principle and passion for the sport one that cannot be made.

Personally, I think Sky is asking for trouble - by bidding £1.2bn for live rights, three times what they are paying now, something has to give to keep the operation profitable. Analysts reckon that subscription charges will have to rise £10 per month for every customer to balance the books, pushing the average subscription up towards £50 a month. Thats £600 a year, not forgetting to add the compulsory £104 License Fee to pay for the BBC's content. How many people can afford to buy the TV, £40 for the digital set, then another £700 a year, just to watch Premiership games on TV? When it becomes cheaper to go to matches than to watch on TV, the time has come to say enough is enough.

You forgot to mention that some Worthington Cup matches are also on ITV regions depending on where the teams are from eg. the first leg of Tranmere V Bolton in last year semi was on Granada.

And the BBC have first pick of the FA cup matches not second. As well as that they have all Englands home competative internationals on live with them on Sky as well. They can also buy rights to away matches from forign broadcasters.

They can show highlights of other England matches that are at home.

Ste

That post was written before the 5.30pm press conference. The other MOTD thread was.

Originally posted by Pindasoft
I remember a story once told to me by an Australian friend, over there the rugby union sold the rights to a closed TV circuit, it went from sport no. 1 to nothing....... But hey, the money was good for two years! Narrow minded money thinking will lead to the destruction of professional football also.

When I first read this nearly 2 years ago (!), I thought - this wouldnt happen here but it has with the Nationwide League. They now have a lose-lose situation with re-negotation meaning losing money otherwise the deal with ITV Digital will be scraped and the rights will be sold to Sky for less anyway!

Ste