The SPFL have promised a number of foreign broadcasters ‘the most exciting Premiership race for a long, long time’.
Quite how they can make such a claim is open to interpretation, the competitive aspect of a league is the unknown- since the turn of the year Celtic have increased their lead over their Glasgow rivals from goal difference only to six points. By midnight on Wednesday the gap between the clubs could well be up to eight points with 13 matches left to play.
Promoting a cup competition promises can certainly be made, in the Betfred Cup the SPFL have matches played to a finish with a certain set of ties culminating in a cup final.
The SPFL gets a relative pittance in terms of broadcasting money with the recent Sky Sports deal for £30m a season hailed as some sort of breakthrough. Down south the same broadcaster gets three fixtures for that figure in the EPL.
Selling foreign rights to the Scottish game brings more crumbs to the table, from the comments of an un-named SPFL official it seems that ‘Brendan v Stevie G’ is being touted left, right and centre to increase revenue.
A league source told the Daily Record: “What we’re selling here is the most exciting Premiership race for a long, long time. There is a renewed interest in Scottish football and it’s great to know that people in all corners of the planet will be able to watch it come to a conclusion.
“Neil Doncaster has been keeping his cards close to his chest in terms of the sums of money that are involved but these deals have already raised around £2m of additional money and there are more deals in the pipeline with a number of countries around Europe.
“The international rights were never much of a money maker in the first place so it’s really a matter of showing the rest of world that the Scottish game is very much alive and kicking.”
In the ‘heyday’ of the SPL one club was fielding teams mainly made up of players attracted by disguised remuneration scams in order to make the competition artificially competitive.