SPL TV looks like pie in the sky

IT’S NOT too many years since you traded in your old record collection for CDs. You’re maybe halfway through changing your video collection into DVDs. You can remember the days when the licence fee was your only direct outlay on television, but now you pay extra for several kids’ channels, a couple of movie channels and the Sky Sports package.

After so much accumulation of new media at such expense, are you really going to stump up more money for an extra channel devoted to Scottish football? Can you afford it, and do you want it?

The SPL clearly thinks that a sufficient number of people will answer yes to both questions. That is why it has decided to launch its own channel next season, instead of agreeing a new deal with an existing broadcaster.

"We have carried out exhaustive research, interviewing large numbers of supporters who attend games as well as other fans who follow football on TV," said a spokesperson for the SPL. "All 12 clubs have unanimously backed the concept of an SPL channel having seen this research. You can draw your own conclusions."

We can, but not very many conclusions, nor very positive ones. A dozen chairmen want the new venture to succeed, and have seen evidence which has bolstered their hopes.

They all have some experience of football, but they are also all interested parties. So their assessment might be defined as informed, but not objective. They want this project to prosper. Their reputations partly depend on it.

It is, of course, a lot easier now to get a TV station up and running than it was, say, ten years ago. Current technology allows many niche channels to thrive, or at least keep their heads above water.

But the SPL does not want to end up as a niche channel, or a mildly comic cult. Nor can it afford to. Its current Sky deal is worth over £11million a year, and it was discussing a higher amount when negotiations were ended.

In other words, unless it can pull in that sort of money - after meeting the setting-up and running costs for its channel, not before - it will be seen to have made a misjudgement.

Say the charge for receiving the new channel is a modest £10 per month, or £120 per year. At that rate SPL TV would require 91,600 subscribers to match the current Sky figure. Is that figure unrealistically high? You can draw your own conclusions.

"Sky have done an excellent job in publicising the SPL," the SPL spokesman added.

"We are now trying to maximise our revenue potential."

IT IS, to put it euphemistically, a bold venture. To the best of one’s knowledge, there is just one ruling sporting body of any size which enjoys sole ownership of its own TV channel. That body is the NBA, and even then, a large number of NBA matches are shown live on other channels in the USA.

More pertinently, the USA has a somewhat larger TV audience than Scotland. What is more, the NBA represents the very pinnacle of world basketball, whereas the SPL is at best situated at base camp in its sporting hierarchy.

So, while the SPL no doubt hopes to attract subscribers from south of the Border, its core market has to be the five million of us. It has to convince enough of us, with our limited budgets and conflicting demands, that Scottish football is worth it.

Those people who turn up to watch live games are convinced already, but some of them are hostile to more football on TV, not sympathetic. "We are against TV football full stop," said John Macmillan, general secretary of the Rangers Supporters’ Association. " Instead of setting up more channels we should be encouraging fans to go to games."

Of the people who do want to watch football on the box, the most likely purchasers are probably those who already have Sky. The SPL might hope that, if money is tight, significant numbers of those fans will decide that SPL TV plus The Premiership on ITV is enough football and that the English and European games live on Sky are of secondary worth.

Are they? Not in aesthetic terms, they’re not. And that’s the big problem waiting just around the corner for the SPL. If armchair viewers have to choose between the top flights in Scotland and England, between, say, Motherwell v Dundee and Chelsea v Leeds, the majority will surely choose the latter.

And in that case, the SPL could be left with a very large bill for a very large white elephant.

Taken from the Scotsman