Good luck seeing anything from the eastern counties on match of the day.
So none of those teams enter the FA Cup?
The point is, that English football rights are paid for from a "national" BBC Sport budget, while Scottish football rights are paid for from the BBC Scotland budget. That means comparing the budget of an English region with that of BBC Scotland is like comparing apples with oranges.
Ok, I may be a bit thick here, but I have a couple of questions. I realise I may just be oversimplifying things, but it all looks pretty straightforward to me. Why couldn't the BBC:
1. Pay for all sport from the BBC Sport budget? It does seem odd how things are currently funded. It's only 'pots' of money, it all comes from the same source overall. Surely sport is sport, no matter how large the audience?
I think the argument for the current situation isn't based on audience side, but content availability.
The FA Cup and Premiership highlights are broadcast to the whole of the UK. It therefore makes sense that they are funded from a central pot.
The Scottish football stuff shown on Sportscene is only broadcast, I believe, on BBC services within Scotland. (Sure, if you have satellite, you can currently watch out-of-region and out-of-nation services - but if you are on Freeview, and possibly Cable?, you can't. ) As such I can see the logic in funding it from BBC Scotland's budget, as it is for Scottish audiences only. AIUI BBC Scotland itself has decided to purchase those rights for Scottish viewers, not a UK-wide audience. As such surely the funding should come from moneys allocated to Scottish audiences?
If the Scottish football was networked - I could see the argument for the national BBC Sport department funding it. In the current situation I can totally understand the reasoning behind it.
Of course you could re-allocate the money from BBC Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, give it to the nationwide, network, BBC Sport department and let them fund it instead, but what would the point be? It would simply remove some autonomy from the nations sport departments?