Watching the CL in the Uk - The SKY is literally the limit

By: Rob | March 18th, 2008

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Last night, UEFA and SKY annouced that SKY have won the first round of bidding for UK TV rights to Champions League games, which basically means, Tuesdays are now SKY territory. While this might not mean much to some - to those of us who choose not to be ripped off by SKY it is a massive bodyblow. As it stands, the second round of bidding (for Wednesday night games) is about to begin. Potentially SKY could also win that, though Michel Platini has dug in his heels saying he wants at least one game to be on a free to air service. Thanks Michel.

Basically, if you are in the UK and you like your football the options, at the moment stand like this. For live EPL games you have the choice of SKY (monthly suscription, plus an extra one for sports channels) or Setanta Sports, which has the second choice games and again, requires a suscription, though you can get it through Freeview if you are prepared to shell out that bit extra.

For the Champions League, the rights are currently shared between ITV (who show two big games on a Tuesday, invariably the English clubs) which is free to everyone save the TV Licence, and SKY who show all of Wednesday’s games and the rest of Tuesdays, assuming you suscrible to them.

The BBC, which again is free save for the Licence, only has highlights of the EPL, via Match of the Day, England’s games at Wembley (SKY have the away games) and first pick of FA Cup games, which they again share with SKY.

Sky’s hegmony is begining to be broken though. This season was the first you could watch live matches outside of SKY, via Setanta, and from August, ITV and Setanta will share England games, as well as the FA Cup. Naturally, they have bidded all-out for the CL - UEFA ended the bidding early for the Tuesday games because SKY’s bid was so high.

This now leaves the Wednesday games, and it is begining to look as if, even if Platini gets his way and decides not to sell to SKY whatever thier bid - that those who don’t want to pay a silly amount a month - or indeed can’t - will only get one game a week in the CL. I’m not a big fan of SKY - thier coverage might be revolutionairy, but thier guests are not the most forward thinking people. They have however pumped so much money into the EPL to make it such a big and sucsessful league.

So though English football might be lagging behind without SKY it would be nice to have a bit of choice. The BBC, who as it stands have absolutely no regular football as of August, have apparently promised thier regular pundits that they will go all out for the CL. It would be nice to see it on the BBC - but not just one game with the rest on SKY - can’t we have it divided equally between the two?

In some ways, it is a moot point. If you look hard enough, you can find the games on the internet, and the games that SKY usually carry, you can just stream effectively. But it is far from ideal isn’t it? To avoid the blocky falling apart, broken chinese coverage, it looks like Brits are going to have to pay someone next season. Most likely Murdoch.