News of a four year extension to the Sky Sports deal for SPFL football has been met with hostility from Rory Hamilton.Â
The current set up isn’t the most popular with Sky taking exclusive rights from the previous shared deal with BT Sport, last season they opted out of showing their full allocation of matches.Â
Scottish football seems little more than a filler on the Sky Sports schedule, if the money was good it would be bearable but various reports have detailed how countries like Norway are getting paid twice as much as the SPFL receives for their TV deal.Â
On Sunday Sky Sports will show Celtic’s match at Kilmarnock from 12 noon ahead of their Super Sunday EPL special.Â
Lots of SPFL TV deal chat. I have an obvious vested interest, but no inside knowledge. From a business POV, it’s madness. Why would you not take your product to market? There’s no need to do a deal now. We have so many selling points. Have some faith and back your business
— Rory Hamilton (@HamiltonRory) August 12, 2022
It is fairly unusual for someone inside the industry to comment like that, at some stage Hamilton might be looking for work with Sky but he clearly feels very strongly about the current speculation.Â
The SPFL is the last hold that Sky have on Scottish football with the two domestic cup competitions and the international team fixtures shown elsewhere.Â
Hamilton’s commentary work with BT Sport will cover the group stages this season with three Scottish clubs involved.Â
Sky have to start to watch the millions. Old Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall are getting divorced. The settlement that Jerry is going to be due, will be a doozy! Every penny will be a prisoner. In other words ,shaft the Scotland sports fans .English money is better regarded than everyone else’s .
Read today that the very first Sky deal with the EPL was worth £304m. We are 30 years down thr line from that and we don’t even get a tenth of that.
I get the EPL dwarves us but looking around the continent, we are treated very poorly.
It is time the chairmen and women of the SPFL stood up and said enough is enough. Pay us our worth or GTF!!!!
Editor: That £304m was EPL, Doncaster still happily trailing miles behind and picking up his cut in commission.
The game is being sold short by SFA/SPFL and has been for years. If those chaps can’t even organise a decent deal they shouldn’t be there.
Editor: Doncaster is the SPFL CEO. He cannot possibly be entitled to “A Cut”, as you put it, or a percentage of moneys paid to the Scottish Football League for TV football coverage! Come on!