Sky and BBC killing off football

Its the golf coverage I get sky for, cannot pick and chose unfortunatly.

Also don't forget that the football league are more than eager to get hold of skys money,the main reason they televise games is because of the advertising revenue so they are also to blame,and my point is sky is the reason i have been priced out of football after watching Derby for the last 40 years.
The extortionate entry prices are disgusting,Sky pay the league,the league pay the club,the club pay the players inflated salaries and in turn the club fleece the paying public,and you all follow like lemmings and until people boycott the game even if that means the club suffers then so be it,if people are not prepared to do this then stop writing articles complaining that SKY and BBC are killing football.

Ricky your missing the point there. I will not subscribe to sky ever again but I won't stop going to the games. More realistic if people didn't watch the tv than the people who go to the games.
Football has changed for the worse through sky. We all agree on that, in the main.

one of the real wind ups for me is whatever time they decide to put championship matches live on the telly, there is always a premier league game at the same time that gets shown in the pubs- and i wont subscribe to sky (i absolutely will not give murdoch my money).

iv even booked time off work to come up from the westcountry to then find they have moved the match and knackered me plans.

saturday, 3pm, you know where you are with that.

i don't mind a thursday night game, as sometimes i have to work saturdays.

to sky.
more thurs night games please.

Hmmm... bit of confusion on this thread. On the one hand complaining about TV interfering with football, but on the other complaining about the football league show being cancelled.

Personally I think Sky is great. For reasons of cost, holding down a job and travelling great distances me & the lad can only attend one day of live test cricket per year. But thanks to Sky we can see really good coverage - Either the whole match ball-by-ball off Sky+ or a really comprehensive 2 hour highlights show.

Sky has revolutionised the quality of cricket coverage compared to the stilted coverage the terrestial channels provided previously. The only thing I miss about the old coverage in the BBC theme tune.

Wide boy it's not confusing. Live football affects the game, highlights don't and never will.
People can't afford it because of sky and the increased prices for inflated wages!
I admit the coverage in some aspects has revolutionised TV but its a high price to pay for destroying the long term shape of the game.

I can't really commment, but when has that stopped me in the past?

I actually took out my subscription to Sky/BSB/whatever it was in t'old days back in the early 1990's, pretty well when they only had the one Astra satellite and one of the German channels used to show naughty bits.

At first we had the movies, then took out Sky Sports for the golf. Obviously when they pretty well got the monopoly on tennis (the missus) and cricket (me) we were locked in.

When they started shifting some football matches onto ppv, I certainly never entertained paying for any of those - in fact, I was hoping that they would move all Premier League games onto pay per view. But it was not to be, and that revenue stream died out faster than you could say ITV Digital.

I am amazed that gates have held up to the extent that they have at the highest level, given the almost saturation coverage the game gets now on the box. The area where gates have fallen drastically is in internationals, hardly surprising given the extortionate prices for a game at Wembley plus the ripoff rail fares now.

Not sure whether live gates will erode at league games (Prem) because we seem to now have two distinct groups of 'fans' - those who go and those who don't. If all the fans who go to football cancelled their subscriptions to Sky, it wouldn't make a dent.

Some of the games now have viewing figures measured in the hundreds of millions. I'm sorry to say, we've missed the boat. Chances of doing anything about it are zilch - and if Al Jazeera join forces with Sky in the future, the saturation of the game on our screens will be complete.

I wish they'd clear off and have their European or World League and give us our game back - but I don't even think that will happen any more. When a World League comes in, then Man Utd will have their reserves in the prem - and still finish in the top 3.

Like it or not the fact is that those of us who watch football from the inside of a stadium are very much in the minority nowadays.

In principle we should be grateful that people who aren't that interested in football are nevertheless willing to pump hundreds of millions into the game.

We're not, naturally. But that's because the people in charge of football clubs have chosen to divert all that money and more besides into the pockets of players and their agents.

Imagine what grounds we would have, and how cheap season tickets could be, if just 20% of the money sky have paid for football over the last 20 years had been retained in the game instead of given to agents.

Blaming Sky for club's poor spending decisions is a bit like blaming the taxpayer when the civil service wastes billions on not-fit-for-purpose IT systems.

But SKY pay over the odds for the tv rights, I had this argument with RamblingRam. They don't have to pay so much, but they do so that the PL can purchase the best players and so maintain their global hold re:tv. How do you attract the best? Through salaries.

It's a complex issue & football is a microcosm of wider society. Just as the Gov't (successive governments since Thatcher as shown by Robert Peston) allowed the City to deregulate and allowed risky practices to go unchecked, so the FA (lack of leadership, how can Sir Dave Richards be in charge, the man who a wiki entry says presided over Sheff Weds decline) have handed control of the game to the PL & their SKY paymasters and English clubs are amongst the most debt-ridden in Europe.

Where has the money gone? Rightly as you say on wages & agents than on infrastructure & cheaper tickets just like all the cheap credit went on consumerism rather than building up a manufacturing base vis Germany.