One of the subjects that this Celtic site keeps returning to over and over again is the failure of any reform agenda to take root in Scottish football.
Today we got an example of why the reform agenda needs to succeed and why Celtic should be at the forefront of pushing it. It’s not a directly Celtic-related story, but it’s another example of what we have to deal with, the environment in which we operate, and why Scottish football governance is a joke.
It’s about how the Scottish national team’s World Cup qualifiers will all be showing live on the BBC so supporters can watch it for free.
This is nothing but good news.
Scotland international games should be live on the BBC. They should be free to air for everyone in the country to watch. The Scottish national team belongs to the whole country, not just those who can afford a subscription TV service. Yet that has been the pattern for the last few years.
The BBC is congratulating itself on the deal. They shouldn’t be.
Nobody at the BBC should be congratulating themselves on this deal. The only reason we’re in this deal now is that the Viaplay deal, which the SFA had initially proclaimed as the greatest thing since sliced bread, collapsed, leaving the national game without a television contract. The BBC didn’t make enough of an effort to bid for that contract the first time around.
Nor should the SFA be slapping itself on the back and pretending that they did this out of some altruistic motive. They did not. Had they been able to replace the Viaplay deal with something from Sky or Premier Sports or one of the other broadcasting companies out there, they would have leaped at it. And once again, Scotland fans who do not have subscription TV services would have been forced to miss the matches. It is outrageous that we have ended up in this position.
And it’s not the first time. The history of Scottish football broadcasting deals is a long list of missed opportunities, poor decision-making, and prioritising short-term cash over long-term sustainability. Scottish football matches of all sorts were once regularly available on free-to-air television, but that changed as the SFA and SPFL followed the English model, chasing bigger deals from pay-per-view broadcasters.
In 2002, the collapse of ITV Digital left the Scottish leagues scrambling for TV money, and ever since, they’ve lurched from one questionable deal to another.
In 2012, Sky and ESPN picked up a contract for the SPL after the collapse of another much heralded deal, from Setanta Sports, but that came with reduced payments. The SPFL was later formed in 2013 after the merger of the SPL and SFL, partly to improve TV deals and commercial appeal, but things didn’t get much better.
In 2018, a £20 million international broadcasting deal with MP & Silva collapsed when the company defaulted on payments. In 2022, the SPFL signed an extension with Sky Sports, but it was a weak deal compared to other leagues of similar size.
The agreement allowed Sky to show up to 60 games per season but guaranteed only 48, with no flexibility to sell the unpicked matches to other broadcasters. This left many matches unavailable for TV audiences despite demand, a ridiculous situation that no competent football association would allow.
The SFA has been just as bad at handling the Scotland national team’s TV rights.
For years, games were free to air, but they gradually disappeared behind paywalls. In 2014, Scotland matches moved to subscription services, prompting the Scottish Government to call for a return to free-to-air coverage. Fans were largely ignored, and the Viaplay deal in 2022 was the latest in a long line of short-sighted cash grabs. When Viaplay pulled out of the UK market in 2023, it left Scotland games in limbo, proving once again how reckless these deals are.
Scottish international games should always be free, but they’re not the only games that should be free and available for the whole country to see. The fact that fans have to pay three separate subscription fees to watch their team over the course of a season is outrageous.
But that is where we, as Celtic supporters, have ended up—one subscription to watch league football, one subscription to watch Champions League football, and a third subscription to watch the Scottish and League Cups.
An association capable of joined-up thinking would work together with the league bodies and amalgamate all of Scottish football’s club games into one package. It wouldn’t change the fact that we need a separate one for Europe, but it would make life a lot easier for fans who maybe can’t afford to pay for all these services.
There are select fixtures throughout the course of the season that should be available to watch on free TV. The BBC and other broadcasters who don’t operate subscription satellite services should be speaking to the SPFL and the SFA about getting more of these games on terrestrial television.
We are just not creative in the way we do things, and that disenfranchises large numbers of fans. We don’t even have the common sense to write specific clauses into our TV contracts wherein, if Sky or whoever doesn’t pick up all the games they’re entitled to, we can put those games out to tender to the national broadcaster or ITV or whoever might want them. But we’re deficient in our negotiating stance, and they walk all over us as a result of that. Scottish football governance is laughably weak.
There should be a requirement in the regulations somewhere that a specified number of games every season are made available to the national broadcaster so the fans can watch their teams on a handful of occasions without having to pay to do so. This is the kind of thing that a football regulator might insist on as part of its statute to provide protections for supporters. I can see why the TV companies might not like it, but I cannot see why the SFA and the SPFL, which are in the business of representing not just teams but fans, would not agree to it anyway.
So while I welcome today’s news, it is a small step in the right direction, and we didn’t arrive here by anything other than accident. This was not some grand design on behalf of the BBC and the SFA to give back to Scottish football supporters a little of something that they had lost. No, it was a piece of cold-blooded commercial calculation. The BBC has probably snapped the contract up for a pittance because the SFA remains one of the most incompetent associations in Europe and they badly needed a deal in place to placate their irate shareholders – i.e. the clubs.
Frankly, the clubs are mugs for putting up with such bad leadership and I certainly don’t know what it is that Celtic are doing propping up some of these guys.
Nevertheless, this is good news for fans. If only it had been part of something bigger. If only there had been another drive behind it. If only it had been the beginning of a genuine move towards giving supporters more access to football on television without having to pay through the nose for it.
Instead, we got here as a result of incompetence and greed. I guess we have to take our small victories where we find them.
Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images
Ah well then – The perfect chance for these Scummy Bastards to put the boot into whatever Hoops Female Players That are representing Scotland…
Wonder who The Female Antony Ralston will be then !
As it’s gross incompetence at the SFA in everything they do they should be chased out of office , any other walk of life they’d be gone already, certainly is a closed shop with the old boys for the job routine, absolute scandal.
Small but significant point James, the SFA & The SPFL do NOT represent the Supporters.
The SFA represent themselves and the Masonic influence that is at the cellular level of every part of the ‘Institutions’ that make up CIVIC Scotland, local and National.
The SFA is not and never has been a meritocracy, it is ‘jobs for the boys’ writ large and permanently staffed by ex Ibrox administrators or people of a like minded persuasion culled from all strata of the Scottish game. Chairmen of lower league Clubs co-opted to run the Game in Scotland via the ‘greasy-pole’ style of advancement. Chairmen who by dint of running a taxi company and two Saunas or owners of small family based SMEs are considered as successful Local Businessmen and entrusted to run a multi million pound business.
They are not representative of, or have the wellbeing of, the average Supporter in their hearts and minds. They are there to preserve a System and Social Order that benefits the few.
As for the SPFL Board they are made up of, like the SFA, clueless Amateurs with much the same personal and institutional biases as the SFA.
The ‘Game’ needs a root and branch defenestration.
The case for a Scottish Football Ombudsman is clear. The fact that the SFA & SPFL are opposed to it is argumentative enough for its urgent necessity.
I class myself as a proud supporter of Scottish league football, obviously it has its negatives. In that vein I’m not a supporter of the SFA’s Scottish Masonic representatives team that play in blue so it’s no loss or gain to me and that’s not my responsibility it’s as a result of their irresponsibility