ITV's The Big Match Programme

Poking around on YouTube I spotted this, the titles and theme to The Big Match, this variant from LWT 1988:



I understand the theme here is the wonderful Aztec Gold, which was used initially on the coverage of the 1986 Mexican World Cup and it was seemingly adopted/used by ITV for most of its football coverage over the next two years or so, before it was replaced by another ditty on The Big Match, but Aztec Gold lived on as the theme tune to the Saint and Greavsie programme until that show ended in 1992.

It looks like The Big Match was regional (ish) and had a common package as seen above and presumably with changed VT inserts between the computer animations, but a large chunk of it came from LWT.

Apart from the Saint & Greavsie programme, was the Aztec Gold theme used on ITV after it was dropped on Big Match coverage?

ITV had exclusive Live rights to the Football League between 1988 and 1992, but that version of the programme was just called "The Match", was networked, and had a different theme tune.

After 1992 the Big Match no longer really existed, though whatever club football programming didn't fall under the Champions League banner (which I think was rights to the First to Third Divisions) used the Euro 92 theme "You are the Number One" for years afterwards. I seem to recall "The Big Match" showing up on end cards to Champions League games that were otherwise fully UEFA Champions League branded.

The Big Match branding did return for the FA Cup later in the nineties too.

Of course the different theme tune was this one:

Thanks all, is it just me that thinks Goal Crazy sounds like a remix of Aztec Gold in places?

Yes, I think when Carlton/ISN were producing Worthington Cup/FA Cup/Champions League matches during the late 90s/early 2000s.

Aztec Gold was also used on ITV's Results Service when Elton Welsby (remember him?) read out the headlines.

Examples of what people are saying

Here's the FA Cup Semi Final Highlights from 1998 with Big Match Branding at the start


Here's a Cup Winners Cup match involving Arsenal from the mid 1990s called The European Match Live


Here's the Play Off Final between Reading & Bolton from 1995 called the Match Live

A very upbeat sting there, and also a competition to see how many different stings and titles one programme could use.

With Sky having most of the rights by that point I expect it was a way to keep the brand going, by using it on programmes that were already known as something else (such as the Champions League), like how the BBC used to use the MOTD branding even for the World Cup and Euros.

http://carousel.royalwebhosting.net/itv/BigMatch83-88.html

This is a good website for looking at ITV network and regional coverage of football over the years.

Not quite. They dropped The Big Match brand completely in 1988, using The Match (or The European Match) branding for all their football coverage, except the Champions League, and didn't use it at all for nearly a decade. However, in 1997/98 - can't remember when, I remember reading it in Broadcast - they decided to revive the brand for all their football coverage. And there was a proper Big Match title sequence, with distinctly contemporary theme tune, as you can see here...



Obviously, when ITV changed its logo in 1998, they re-edited it to take those bits out. However, the Champions League had its own theme tune and title sequence, and as seen up there the FA Cup also had its own theme - a rearrangement of Jerusalem which was first used for Euro 96 - and I'm pretty sure England highlights used Jerusalem as well. And with most of the League Cup and Football League coverage regionalised, by the end of the contract you only saw the full Big Match title sequence and branding on very rare occasions, usually just the networked League Cup Final and Division One Play-Off Final highlights. Indeed, I remember recording the 2001 League Cup Final highlights and keeping them on tape for ages because it was a rare chance to get that title sequence and theme tune on tape. The rest of the time you'd either get that short sting, or they would add The Big Match logo to the ITV Sport ident (can't find that).

Anyway, in 2001, given it had dwindled to virtually nothing, the Big Match branding was dropped again. The Premiership and the Champions League had their own branding and they didn't really show much else, more or less the only other networked football on ITV outside those contracts in 2001-04 was, again, the League Cup Final and Division One Play-Off Final (live in the first year, highlights the rest). They didn't use any branding for those, they made bespoke titles for them all...



Then there were two big changes in 2004, as they lost the rights to the Premier League, and also decided to network virtually all their coverage, including the League Cup and the Football League, which previously had been mostly regional. The loss of the Premier League also meant they started buying up anything else that cropped up, like Uefa Cup matches, which previously they hadn't bothered with. From the start of the 2004/05 season, everything aside from the Champions League then had a generic ITV football title sequence and used Beautiful Day as the theme tune (which previously had only been used on The Premiership and nothing else). The FA Cup had its own titles and theme when they got it back in 2008 and they stopped using Beautiful Day when they lost the Football League and League Cup rights in 2009. That's it.

I was going to say that there was a rarely seen full length version of that The Big Match sting. Yes they did just add the name to the ITV Sport sting at one point as presumably 3 stings before the titles was seen as excessive.

I recall "The Match" in the early 90s, with very early 90s graphics and presentation and of course 2nd tier games.

1:10 here

Yes, thanks for finding that - that is the version I was referring to. You'll note basketball in that ITV Sport ident, because that was during the era when ITV were broadening their sporting horizons, after a period of more or less just football and F1, with the launch of ITV2, and they had the rights to the NBA, with a highlights show on Saturday afternoons. This was the same period when they started showing snooker again, with the contrived Nations Cup and Champions Cup tournaments, plus some boxing and even a BDO vs PDC darts tournament one Sunday afternoon. But when the ITV Sport Channel collapsed, that all went for a burton and it was football and F1 all the way again.