There I was earlier today, reading the sports section of The Guardian – the printed version. As well as lots of coverage about tonight’s game between Chelsea and Liverpool (and what a thriller that turned out to be!), there were a couple of pieces about tomorrow night’s quarter-final second legs.
The piece about Manchester United and Porto was larger, but there underneath was a piece filed by Dominic Fifield about Arsenal’s second leg at home against Villarreal – I game I’ll be going to.
At the foot of the piece, in both the printed and online versions I read:
Arsenal v Villarreal is available in high definition on Sky Sports HD3 from 7.30pm. To upgrade call 08442 411 333
Huh?
That’s an ad for Sky appearing in editorial space in The Guardian. What’s going on?
At first I thought: times are tough at The Guardian. Perhaps Sky, who are indeed covering the game live, flew Fifield out. Then I remembered that this was the home leg, and the trip between The Guardian’s new Kings Cross headquarters and Arsenal’s stadium in North London was actually completely walkable.
The piece is based around an interview with injured captain Marcos Senna. That can be the only answer. There are compulsory press conferences with the managers that are dictated to by UEFA (even Fergie can’t back out of those if he’s fallen out with Sky or the BBC – something the Premier League should take notice of). Individual player interviews might be separately organised, but I really do think that if a newspaper like The Guardian is getting an interview due to the arrangements made by a host broadcaster, that should be made clear in the copy. Simply printing HD upgrade details really isn’t enough.