The Sky Deal Passes As The Governing Bodies Slap Down Ibrox’ Pettiness And Spite.

Tonight the SPFL has agreed its new deal with Sky.

That deal has been signed in the face of Ibrox’s open opposition and petty obstructionism.

Not only did the deal itself pass, but a resolution by-passing Ibrox’s malicious behaviour was necessary to get it over the line. Both motions got the necessary backing. This nasty chapter is over with.

The deal itself you can debate all day. Did the SPFL need to sign it right now?

Probably not.

But now that certain aspects of it have been better explained it looks a lot more robust than it did. Most fans are right to be sceptical, but the people who run the clubs had the full details in front of them and almost every side in the league wanted to accept it.

That should tell you something. The one club which set itself against the deal didn’t do it out of commercial considerations but more nefarious ones. Knowing that they would probably lose the vote they simply decided not to respond at all, which put up a barrier which the SPFL had to propose a special resolution to get around.

It is a childish piece of opposition and sabotage which had an even more juvenile intent; they weren’t asking for changes to the deal itself, they were asking for an SPFL apology for what they regard as prior mistreatment. For such infantile purposes did they threaten the whole agreement. It is fitting that the SPFL acted to bypass this lamentable behaviour.

So when you consider that those who judged the deal on its relative merits chose to endorse it, whilst the one club which didn’t want to see it go through opposed it out of nothing more than immature spite you have to conclude that with the information in front of them they made what they believe to be the best call.

This might not, in the end, be the right deal but it was the best one available right now, the only one actually on the table, and the clubs voted overwhelmingly in favour of it based on the facts they had to hand. So right deal or not, it’s been done for the right reasons, on the basis of data and a proper market analysis.

Which is more than the opposition offered.

So whilst questions remain, the simple truth is that you have to trust the people at the clubs and how they’ve come to this decision.

It’s also readily apparent that the initial coverage of this, which was heavily slanted against the agreement, was the result of a leak and a leak that was heavily spun to put this in the worst possible light.

I’ll get to that point next. It’s an important one.

In the meantime, this gives clubs certainty for the short to medium term and I can understand why they voted in favour of it. Other options may present themselves as the deal gets nearer to its end, but for today a deal has been struck which most clubs seem happy with.