Football never fails to amaze with their awful ideas - not only would that kill off the Europa League and seriously devalue the Champions League it would really hurt the national leagues too as the fight the Champions League places is what drives them more than the title itself nowadays. It's also lumping in low quality games with high quality games, so from a broadcasting point of views makes no sense at all.
Football never fails to amaze with their awful ideas - not only would that kill off the Europa League and seriously devalue the Champions League it would really hurt the national leagues too as the fight the Champions League places is what drives them more than the title itself nowadays. It's also lumping in low quality games with high quality games, so from a broadcasting point of views makes no sense at all.
How would it devalue the Champions League?? Presumably if the teams were any good they would knock out those from the current Europa League format in the earlier stages to pretty much make it the same as usual but just an extended European football fest instead. Sounds mental.
And for what it's worth, the Europa League is the most pointless competition known to man. And that takes the Johnstone's Paint Trophy into consideration too.
The group stages are already incredibly weighted in favour of the seeded teams - throw in Europa League teams too and games will be even more one sided and the competition still won't get going until the final 16.
Yes, the Europa League is very much a mickey mouse cup but it's generally competitive and more importantly a financially viable way in for many broadcasters (free to air broadcasters especially) to get some European football and it does seem to be growing every year. I don't think CL broadcasters would be willing to pay that much more for a 64 team tournament than UEFA get currently from selling the CL rights and EL rights separately. That cash would have to be split 64 ways rather than 32 too - so although it would almost certainly work out more for current Europa League games, it could work out significantly less for the big Champions League regulars, and they're not going to agree to that.
The mechanism for playing the competition will be fascinating, they surely can't contemplate 16 matches a night too, if not will they have to play over four nights to make things level. The domestic competitons wont like that. We need to know the details, I suspect the football clubs will too. More problems caused than solved I think.
The name would be ridiculous. A "Champions" league with teams that finished 6th or 7th in their leagues or who won their equivalent of the Capitol One Cup?
.... of course ITV could revert to fewer, maybe longer, pre-match ad breaks, and locate them in the traditional places, I.e. one in the warm up, two at HT, one during the wrapup. Rather than the incessant frequency currerntly adopted.
BT's new foray into sport coverage will be based in the Olympic Park Broadcast Centre. 3 studios apparently. Planning application to be submitted tomorrow.
BT's new foray into sport coverage will be based in the Olympic Park Broadcast Centre. 3 studios apparently. Planning application to be submitted tomorrow.
BT's new foray into sport coverage will be based in the Olympic Park Broadcast Centre. 3 studios apparently. Planning application to be submitted tomorrow.
Charles Sale reported it a few days ago as the reason why ITV is no longer in the running to produce BT's coverage.
Quote:
BT's Olympic aim
BT Vision’s coverage of the Premier League next season is expected to be presented from the Olympic Park’s media centre, which will give the network the 40,000 square feet of space it wanted for the hub of its new sports channel.
Talks are in progress with iCity, who won the legacy bid to develop the Press and Broadcast buildings. BT had been negotiating with ITV to produce the PL football content, for which they paid £738million.
But the discussions broke down around the proposed ITV studio location at their South Bank HQ as BT did not want to squeeze in with other productions.
After ITV’s withdrawal, the BT tender is being contested by Sunset & Vine, IMG media and North One.