The Sport Thread

The rugby highlights started last week and are presented from the grounds in a similar way to The Championship so no studio involved.

Clive's ability to sound suprised at something he's already seen was often used before he become ITV's number one. He got a name for himself with his ability to sound surprised at a goal he'd already seen in Premiership matches that didn't already have commentary.

According to another forum, as Setanta and ITV were in negotiations on Wednesday, they got Clive to commentate live just in case it was needed, apparently. And if it wasn't they could have used it in the build-up for the Kazakhstan game which they have live, I suppose. He sounded appropriately confused for the red card, anyway.

Apparently too Matt was the only available presenter at such short notice and lives in the North West so they did it at Granada for that reason.

Two bit of interesting Sky-related guff this afternoon. One - my local pool hall has had to forgo its Sky Sports subscription as the price for venues has gone up 40%. This now leaves (at last count) 1 or 2 venues in central Newport with a Sky Sports sub, and that includes the type of unfriendly pub you don't go in unless you're over 65 and hate young people.

Secondly - it seems that on Wednesday nights, teams of crack Sky squaddies were sent round pubs checking that those showing the England game on Setanta 1 were licensed Sky premises. From the sports pages of the Guardian:


Sorry - but if Setanta is available on other media, other media should be available for commercial premises. What about old pubs that can't have a sky dish bolted to the side? Can Virgin create a commercial cable contract?

Typical Sky bullyboy tactics, but as pubs that can't have Sky dishes - I'd imagine they're likely to be in areas that don't have cable either.

Also a report today the Premiership rights could be inflated by up to 35% next time around - absolutely ridiculous.

Rugby League on the BBC has always got a raw deal south of Manchester, but it's ridiculous now it's at the play-off stage rather than just making The Super League Show national - and at a reasonable hour - they make a completely separate network show to screen a couple of hours before The Super League Show airs up North!

IIRC this happened last season as well during the playoffs when the BBC declared they were going to show highlights from the playoffs nationwide every season from now on. Seems strange they dont just make the SLS nationwide anyway, it fills a gap every week and they dont have to shell out any more for the rights as they already have them they don't use them to their full effect. They wouldn't even have to have loads of analysis either, just show pure highlights.

Interestingly the nationwide repeat of the Super League show is still on during the playoffs at 5am tonight/tomorrow morning, which means in the north the same set of highlights will have been shown 3 times in the space of 18 hours! Surely some kind of record outside the Olympics.

I notice next week The Super League Show is on BBC Sport Interactive at 11:30 on Sunday, an hour and a half before it goes out on BBC 1 North.

ITV to show England Highlights - MediaGuardian

Basically ITV have secured the Highlights to the remainder of Englands Away Qualifiers after last week's debacle with Setanta.

Further to my above point -

The pool hall chain made a profit of £3 million (down from £12 million) last financial year. £1.2 million was spent on Sky Sports subscriptions for the various branches.

No wonder they cancelled it.

Those figures don't mean much on their own - what was their turnover?

ITV have signed a new boxing deal, to show at least 26 Mick Hennessy promotions, starting with Carl Froch in December

Link