You can't see that on T.V. (British edition)
Politics, cowardice, and an archaic rule have made a mess with television in the U.K.
By now, those of us in America who consume sports on television are familiar with the frustrations that exist. A variety of weird contracts and a distribution system that is too almost too diverse makes it impossible for anyone to see everything they want.
For example, I haven’t had access to the Dodgers local cable network ever since it started in 2014. I haven’t had access to the Lakers channel since a couple years after that. The networks that carry the Angels, Clippers, Kings, and Ducks dropped off around 2017. Heck, I even started a subscription to YouTube TV so I could watch LAFC matches and even bought a team jersey with a YouTube TV logo on it and that contract ended quickly. (All of MLS is on Apple+ and I pay $70 a year for it.)
Growing up in Los Angeles, I was very familiar with the NFL’s local blackout law, which for years required teams to sell at least 85% of their tickets 72 hours prior to kickoff or the game would be blacked out in the local market. This even applied to playoff games. The first Super Bowl was blacked out in Los Angeles. Super Bowl VII, which was also played at the Memorial Coliseum, was shown in the Los Angeles market and it just seemed weird to watch an NFL game at the Coliseum. It might have been the first one I had ever seen. (I had seen several USC and UCLA football games as college games didn’t have the same restrictions.)
In 2014, the NFL just sort of gave up on the blackout rule and I believe every home fan now gets to see all 17 of their team’s regular season games, even if they are fans of the Chicago Bears or Houston Texans.
But if you’ve been reading me here in this space, you know that I do follow English football (or soccer, I’m not very strident on the matter). There are 380 Premier League matches in a full season. And, if I’m so inclined and willing to watch some on delay and pay for a Peacock subscription, I can watch all of them. And this is the case with many of the international markets for the Premier League. I can also watch all the matches in Germany’s Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, and I think France’s Ligue 1 although the latter requires me to subscribe to BeIN and that’s just too much.1
But if I were in Great Britain, and it was 3 p.m. on a Saturday2, the time when the most football matches (at all levels) kick off, I can’t watch any of them. No matter what3. You can’t pay some cable company a king’s ransom. There are just no matches shown at all. Not even matches from other countries.
This rule, from what I can tell, dates back to the early 1960s, and was put into place to discourage fans from staying home and watching matches on television instead of paying money to go to their local grounds to watch a match in person. This has been the way ever since, with only a brief respite during parts of the 2020 and 2021 seasons when teams played in closed stadiums because of COVID. But once fans were let back in, the 3 p.m. rule went back in effect. And this takes place in a country where there is literally no free television as everyone has to pay an annual fee to use a TV (it’s around $220). The Premier League matches that do get shown appear on a mixture of Sky Sports, BT Sport, and Amazon.
There aren’t any studies I can find that tell if the 3 p.m. rule is effective. Germany does not black out any matches from the Bundesliga domestically and people swarm to matches there.4 But the chances of changes to the 3 p.m. rule seem remote. When in Britain, you usually don’t even see highlights of the 3 p.m. matches until BBC airs “Match of the Day” where pundits discuss all the matches that you didn’t see.
One of the most famous commentators that the BBC uses for “Match of the Day” (MOTD for short) is Gary Lineker, a longtime English national team hero who played for 17 seasons for several teams, most notably Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham Hotspur. Lineker quickly moved into television after the stopped playing and his stature would be equivalent to that of someone like Terry Bradshaw or Charles Barkley. Not in their style, but in their importance in commenting on a sport.
On Friday, the BBC announced that Lineker would be “stepping aside” from his MOTD duties. Lineker said he did not step aside, but rather he was told that he and the BBC had to work out an agreement over Lineker’s use of social media.
So was Lineker trolling people on Twitter? Was he posting adult photos on Instagram? No, Lineker was criticizing the British government’s policies, particularly new immigration policies instituted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Sunak, since he is in charge of a country that is an island, can’t say that he wants to build a wall to keep immigrants out, but he can use the slogan “Stop the Boats.” Sunak wants to stop the arrival of ALL asylum seekers arriving boat in Great Britain and has said that anyone not arriving without properly seeking asylum through prescribed official channels will be deported and not be granted any of the rights that other immigrants get. There is even a provision to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. International organizations have warned Sunak and Braverman that their plan likely violates international law. You can read more details about the problem in this Washington Post/Bloomberg article.
Lineker tweets about football, but also about politics. And, unlike most prominent Americans working in TV in sports, Lineker leans to the left. He’s probably more on the moderate side, but the ruling Tory Party in Britain has gone very far to the right, so Lineker appears to be a bombthrower. Lineker compared the proposed to immigration policies to “something from 1930’s Germany.”
The constant harping on the immigration policies of the Sunak government was apparently too much for the BBC to deal with and he was told to dial it back. And Lineker, who has the superior negotiating position because he’s independently wealthy and way more popular than Sunak, Braverman, or any BBC executive, was still bounced from his MOTD duties.
But, there must be a plethora of pundits who will take his job? Wrong. The two other commentators scheduled to work with Lineker on Saturday, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, both said they would not work without Lineker. When it became apparent that no one was going to work MOTD without Lineker, the BBC decided to air the show without commentators and let the highlights speak for themselves.
This all seems like a lot of hubbub about who narrates a soccer highlight show. But, it was not the only problem the BBC faced recently.
David Attenborough, who has produced numerous renowned nature documentaries for the BBC over his 96-year life, has a new series coming soon called “Wild Isles” which is a five-part look at various types of wildlife on islands surrounding Great Britain. Except… Attenborough made six episodes. The last episode is reported to be a look at the dismal future the islands in the series face because of environmental changes. But this episode will not air on television, but will only be available on the BBC’s streaming service.
Depending upon whom you believe, the BBC believed that the sixth episode was never designed to fit in with the other five. Others believe that the BBC feared criticism from the government over the final episode and opted to reduce its visibility.
I’ve written too much here. Perhaps Lineker should just do the soccer equivalent of “shut up and dribble”5 Perhaps David Attenborough should not talk about the environment on a show that's about... the environment.
Perhaps this was all me just projecting my fears for the United States on to problems in the United Kingdom. I do not know. But whatever it is, I am deeply disturbed by all of this.
Ligue 1 is also a weird league and one team (Marseille) is owned by Frank McCourt and I don’t want to deal with that.
The rule doesn’t apply for any day but Saturday.
This rule doesn’t apply in Northern Ireland, because well, it’s different.
The Bundesliga also has a fairly high number of affordable tickets for each match and operates under the idea that treating the consumers of their product well will make them happy. It’s a revolutionary concept.
It actually works for both sports!
You can't see that on T.V. (British edition)
Bring back Boris!