The Sport Thread

No one has mentioned channel 4.

I'm not sure airing at 3am on a Tuesday night would be the best idea for the EFL.

Maybe because we remember when it used to have a remit to be alternative, not just sign up anything that might be going.

Watching CSKA v Man United on RTE2 and at the start of the 2nd half George Hamilton and Ray Houghton were commentating on a crackling phone line for the first 5 minutes before resuming normal commentary, the commentators stated that it was a problem within the stadium and affected all broadcasters so was it the same on BT Sport?

for Champions League and Europa League matches, the home broadcaster and main visiting broadcaster gets an audio track on the world feed, so doesn't need to rely on the vagaries of getting an ISDN line to work across borders. (So in this case BT was fine!)

No problem according to 3 tweets I've seen:

@RTEsoccer Guys how come there is no issue with commentary on BT Sport for #CSKAMUN game? Perfect sound....

— Jason (@erikthredarmy) September 27, 2017

Rte say the commentary for everyone is down hence using the telephone 🙄🙄............ Switch to BT Sport 3 for non comedic, serious coverage

— Damian O'Reilly (@damooreilly89) September 27, 2017

Nothing wrong with BT sport commentary I think @RTEsoccer is getting shafted. #CSKAMUFC #ChampionsLeague

— Ciarán Halpin (@CiaranHalpin1) September 27, 2017

Were BT commentating off tube? Then again, if anybody can get a working ISDN line you'd think it was BT

I think it’s safe to assume that’s an audio track with BT commentary from the stadium on the world feed.

Probably not a simple thing to explain to people on Twitter though.

Clearly those RTE viewers would have been better off as they’d have been none the wiser if they had been doing commentary off tube.

We do try our best - but the Borisov game was off-tube from London, I think largely for for logistical reasons.

I don't see the problem with off tube commentary for foreign Champions League matches as long as RTE are not claiming they are at the stadium when they are not. During the last World Cup RTE only sent 2 commentary teams to Brazil and the rest were done in Dublin and it didn't take away from the tournament at all.

Is it just my perception or does football on ITV always seem to lack atmosphere because they keep the atmos quite low under the commentators?

No, the atmosphere at England games really IS that bad. I was at Wembley for Wales' away game some years ago. 77k crowd, us 1000 Welsh made more noise than the 76k English there.