Category: Sport
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Watching European Football Finals on TV
Well the first results are in. BT is very pleased that BT Sport got a record audience on Wednesday night for the Europa League Final – the first big final of their three year exclusive contract for UEFA Champions’ League and Europa League coverage. According to Media Guardian, it drew an average of 1.6m viewers…
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Live Football on the Radio
No, I’m not writing about the new Premier League contracts for UK radio. They do seem a bit overdue though, and I’m slightly sad that Absolute Radio has made clear that it’s not bidding for live coverage from next season. So I expect some kind of carve up between Five Live and Talksport, with Talksport…
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F1 to Follow Cricket Into Obscurity
Here’s how F1 and Bernie Ecclestone do business: 21 December 2015 – Channel 4 wins terrestrial rights to Formula 1, after the BBC hands them back. There was rumoured to be a fight with ITV for them. Bernie Ecclestone, Chief Executive Officer of the Formula One group said: “I am sorry that the BBC could…
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Virgin Media and the Premier League
Judging from recent interviews across the media, Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge is out and about shouting loudly about his company’s complaint about how the Premier League sells its UK TV rights. His complaint is broadly that the league only sells 168 of the 360 fixtures each season, artificially limiting supply to keep prices high.…
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The NFL in London
This Sunday sees the first of this year’s International Series NFL games at Wembley – the New York Jets play the Miami Dolphins. This year there are once again three games, all regular season fixtures, meaning they’re not friendlies, and they count for the teams involved who want to reach the playoffs. I went to…
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How Not To Reinvigorate T20
The ECB has a problem. As the third Ashes Test gets underway, largely unwatched by the British public, participation in cricket continues to fall. According to Sport England’s Active People survey, just 0.6% of people ever play cricket. And this is a number that’s been in decline since the survey began measuring sports uptake. In…
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BT’s Advertising
As the new football season rapidly approaches (even though it’s still only July), so the marketing spend of the various pay-TV operators ramps up. Sky is showing some fairly well-received adverts highlighting their Premier League heritage and super-imposing Thierry Henry into the video. On the other hand, BT is busy trying to let the British…
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Six Nations’ Deal
Yesterday we learned that the BBC will lose it’s exclusivity of broadcasting the Six Nations, and will share coverage with ITV from 2016. The BBC has pulled out two years early from a previous agreement that ran until 2017, in a similar manner to the deal with Sky over F1. To be honest, this seems…
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The Champions’ League – Part Two
This is a follow up to yesterday’s piece anticipating BT’s changes in packages having won exclusive Champions’ League and Europa League rights, although I’m mostly talking about Champions’ League coverage here. Well BT has announced its new football deal and there were some things we expected, and some things we didn’t. Yes, Gary Lineker is…
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The Champions’ League – Part One
On Tuesday we will hear what BT has in store for its coverage of the Champions’ League and Europa League. It outbid Sky and ITV to win exclusive rights for the next three seasons. The expectation is that they’ll announce Gary Lineker as co-presenting with Jake Humphries over Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with a £5…
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Pavé
This weekend sees the Tour of Flanders, and next weekend is Paris – Roubaix. Since it’s been a while since I last did some screen printing, I thought I’d try to make a print based on the cobbled classics. I’m quite pleased with the results, but I thought I’d run through my process. I actually…