The Sport Thread

UEFA statement:

It'll be on BT Sport ESPN.

I'm almost certain that BT have had a night with 9 UCL matches before, but I can't remember what caused it - I was sure it Man Utd with a bomb scare, but having looked it up see that was Premier League a PL fixture.

Indeed he did, as he always made sure he attended the match he was going to pundit on for The Big Match the next day...



There was an example about a decade or so ago on Sky when the referee got injured and the fourth official took over, with only a few minutes left of the match, and someone from Sky took over as the fourth official, his only job being to hold up the board for added time. I remember Alan Parry saying "Three minutes added time... and that's our floor manager!"



I think there's been a couple of occasions where a Tuesday night match has been played on the Wednesday, I remember it happening back in the ITV News season when a Newcastle match was called off because of a flooded pitch. What's convenient for BT is that the original plan was for the Liverpool match, which kicks off at 6pm, to be on BT Sport 3, with Man City at 8pm on BT Sport 2, to allow for extended build-up and punditry on both, but because both games are now totally meaningless as both have already won their groups, they're showing them both on BT Sport 2 with just a quick changeover, so there's space for another match.

I remember being at a game at Wembley a few years ago when the ref was injured and there was a call on the PA for a qualified referee to make themselves known to a steward. Someone near where I was sitting got up and some quick-witted fans started pointing at him chanting "the referee's a w..."

Also trying to think of when there might have been 9 Champions League games on in a night, I'm sure it has happened. I was thinking of the attack on the Dortmund team bus which led to the match being played the next day, but I think that was a quarter-final.

Having had a dig through the archives, I was right about it being a Manchester team, but City, and because of rain.

Heineken Champions Cup - seems to be some small tweaks to the graphics, largely to accommodate the expanded/shortened 24 team/four match group stage format

Talking of rugby graphics, the Challenge Cup Score BUG for Newcastle v Blues seems to be 4:3 safe - it's tiny and almost in the middle of the screen.

Just checked in and there doesn’t seem to any graphics now!

Edit: scorebar now back. When did the Challenge Cup finally adopt the recoloured Champions Cup graphics? IIRC that competition had old style still quite recently.

Today!

Didn't even twig that.

It's in a better position on S4C (in Welsh) but has been coming and going there too.

BT are taking the world feed and doing off-tube commentary in London.

It’s about time the Challenge Cup changed - those graphics debuted back in 2014 (has it really been that long since the big TV rights row!) and weren’t exactly the best in the first place (weird rugby ball shaped clock being the case in point). Good to see they’ve updated but not sure why it’s taken two years.

Presume BT just piggy backing S4C's feed, like often happens if S4C are showing European games they tend to do the production.

S4C were the host broadcaster in Newcastle last night, just as Channel 4 were host in Bristol today. They're all produced by S+V, so I guess it's mostly down to whose budget it comes from!