Scotland national team have been reduced to the status of a video influencer punting lipstick on YouTube. And all the nation’s politicians have to offer are soundbites instead of solutions.
Enraged by the absence of the Croatia game from the nation’s television screens, the SNP‘s Pete Wishart called the situation ‘a disgrace’ and demanded that someone do something.
When Neil Lennon and Ally McCoist engaged in a bout of handbags on the touchline, Wishart’s cronies called a Holyrood summit before the Rangers bus pulled away from Parkhead.
There are no summits planned to bring the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to heel. No offers of government funding to secure coverage for the nation from Norwegian rights holders Viaplay.
Before the General Election, the Scottish Greens vowed to put the issue in their election manifesto. Health, social care and spokesperson Gillian Mackay could barely pass a microphone without calling on football to show the red card to subscription channels.
Scotland are playing against Croatia at Stadion Maksimir in Zagreb on Saturday evening
The match, however, will not be shown on television screens and it has enraged politicians
SNP ‘s Pete Wishart called the situation ‘a disgrace’ and demanded that someone do something
Now here we are, three months later, and even the subscription channels have put the wallet away.
The only way anyone can watch Billy Gilmour go toe-to-toe with Luka Modric in the Nations League is if they have a Smart TV or a laptop with access to Viaplay’s YouTube channel and a better data plan than Michael Matheson.
All told it’s been a sobering week for the armchair marketing gurus who think the world’s broadcasting giants are forming an orderly queue at the steps of Hampden, waiting to knock Sky Sports off their perch.
If Amazon Prime, DAZN and beIN Sports were really itching for a chance to throw their millions at Scottish football, then the chance was there to show their hand this week. In the real world, they were nowhere to be seen.
In a broadcasting utopia, fans of Scotland’s national team would switch on the flat screen in the corner at 5pm and take a trip back to a golden age when they could watch full live coverage of a game against Croatia on council TV with a can of Tennents in one hand and a remote control in the other.
That’s not how things work these days. A quick scan of the Radio Times shows that viewers in Scotland are on to plums.
BBC1 is banging out an old episode of Garden Rescue with Charlie Dimmock. On BBC2 Paul Martin presents a selection of tedious tat on Flog It. Housewives favourite Ben Shephard is on ITV1 presenting Tipping Point, a gameshow based on that old arcade game which used to swallow up 2p coins on childhood holidays to Largs and Millport.
The issue here is that free-to-air football isn’t *really* free. Someone, somewhere always has to dig deep for the rights to bring the big games to the television screen. And even the big five leagues now see evidence of the media-rights market shrinking.
Saturday’s game will not be broadcast on TV but it will be streamed live on YouTube by Viaplay
The Italian contract went down three per cent and Ligue One in France suffered an 11 per cent drop compared to the deal struck for 2021 to 2024.
Those large cheques for football are growing smaller all the time. Illicit fire sticks are now a huge problem and, when energy bills are rising, the first thing to go is that £14.99 a month for Viaplay or Premier Sports.
Viaplay are feeling the pinch so badly they pulled out of the UK last year and sold their football operation back to Premier. The only package they didn’t sell, sadly, was the rights to Scotland internationals.
If terrestrial channels had the will or the means to snap them up, that wouldn’t matter a jot. Despite buying up Scotland and Northern Ireland’s Nations League games last month, however, ITV’s attempts to repeat the trick foundered this time. Oddly, they’ve no qualms over spending whatever it takes to show England losing to Greece.
The BBC have their own issues. The corporation launched a voluntary redundancy drive in July in the hope of cutting 500 jobs and trimming £200million from their budget. When it comes to Scotland games, there’s nothing left in the pot.
Premier Sports would be better than nothing. While 11 of our 12 clubs were willing to accept a knockdown price from the Irish broadcaster for 20 games from the Scottish Premiership, however, Viaplay took much the same approach as Celtic. Thanks, but no thanks.
The SFA don’t get everything right. But a decision to sell the rights to Scotland games to UEFA for £10million a year now looks like the best they’ve ever made.
Had they kept hold of the rights they’d have spent this week haggling with BBC Scotland and ITV over buttons and washers.
And if public service broadcasters can’t – or won’t – pay for Scottish football, the future impact on grassroots football, refereeing, the women’s game, community programmes and schools football won’t just be problematic. It’s potentially catastrophic.
Fans need subscriptions to Premier Sports and Sky Sports to watch domestic Scottish football
Scotland’s players pictured training on the eve of their Nations League clash with Croatia
Ditch the hat if you want to get ahead, Paul
According to his old mucker Steve Perryman, Celtic’s new head of recruitment is a man who wears many hats.
If Paul Tisdale has his wits about him, he’ll leave them at home when he goes out in Glasgow city centre.
Once dubbed ‘the most stylish man in football’, the 51-year-old cut a dash on the Exeter City touchline by wearing 1950s-style pork pie hats, deerstalkers, tweed waistcoats and cravats.
Portraying his fashion statements as a motivational tool for players, Tisdale explained: ‘I’ll go out early and be stood in that technical area, with my silk scarf, feeling the b****cks. When you walk out, you’ll look at me and know that, if I feel it, then you’ll feel the nuts, too.’
Sorry, but Scottish football isn’t ready for this. Former Dundee boss Simon Stainrod was the last man to turn up for games in a fancy hat and there’s a reason why no-one has done it since.
Ollie Watkins proves that Tisdale has an eye for a player. But, when he starts his new gig, the ground rules should be clear from the start. He has to stop dressing like that.
Paul Tisdale, pictured wearing a hat in November 2020, is Celtic’s new chief of recruitment
Rangers are on the hunt for a head of football operation after Creag Robertson left his role
Rudderless Rangers are stuck in a cycle of failure
Rangers already have no permanent chairman, no chief executive and no head of academy. Now the departure of Creag Robertson leaves them hunting for a head of football operations as well.
None of this hints at a happy ship. In the short-term, interim chairman John Gilligan and his board of directors can probably hold things together. In the long-term, the foundations badly need fixed. Former chairman John Bennett spoke of the club being stuck in a cycle of ‘rinse and repeat.’
A manager comes in, rebuilds the team with the limited funds available, loses to Celtic in September, throws the title away in October and leaves the club shortly after. Then the whole process starts again.
A fish rots from the head down. And poor leadership is the root cause of the club’s failure and demise.
They tried the ‘Rangers men’ and it didn’t work. A non-executive chairman who knows how to keep a handle on boardroom factions would help now. An astute, savvy CEO with a knowledge of how Scottish football works would do no harm either.
Until Rangers get things right off the pitch, nothing will change significantly on it.
