News broke last week that the Imps’ FA Cup game with Birmingham City has been moved to a midday kick-off ‘due to it being selected for international broadcast.’
It replaces the Mansfield Town game, which had also been moved to lunchtime, and comes at the start of January, after a December in which two games have kicked off away from the usual 3 pm time. Now, I’m not going to be a hypocrite as I’ve spoken of the (sad) need for the Sky money and how it benefits the club, but in my opinion, this move takes the biscuit, breaks it up into little pieces and sprinkles it on the dying corpse of football tradition.
Yep, if you came up to me and said I was unhappy on last week’s podcast, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t get around to talking about this.
I don’t mind games being moved for TV, especially not in the FA Cup. Take the Chesham game, for instance. People across the country could watch. Same with our FA Cup run in 2016/17 – it’s part and parcel of the game. I don’t particularly like the early kick-offs in the league, but we had Sky adverts on our podcast and the club benefit as well. Sadly, football does move on, and I can understand the benefits and begrudgingly accept them. I’ve often said they’re actually better for me because I can go out in town, get my write-up done afterwards, and have all of Sunday to do whatever normal people do on a Sunday.
Why this is different
BUT (here it comes) that is compromised when the game is shifted for overseas viewers. we’re not talking about the World Cup, World Club Cup, or indeed anything that should be a priority for viewers overseas. I understand that Birmingham are US-owned, and we have overseas owners, but when the oldest cup competition in the world is changed to the absolute detriment of game-going supporters, and the only benefits are to people overseas, I think we’ve crossed a line. This isn’t lazy xenophobia either, but surely the priority should always be a club’s fans. If we’re on terrestrial telly in the FA Cup, that can be a huge boost. If we’re just being beamed live to Detroit, and people here in the UK either have to listen on the radio or be in Birmingham (of all places) by lunchtime on a Saturday, there’s something going fundamentally wrong with the game.
I’ve always defended things that others say are detrimental to our game which have yet to prove that detriment. I’m talking primarily about the Vertu Trophy, for instance. I wasn’t massively against the Sky deal, even with the disruption. But this? No, it’s not for me at all. I wouldn’t have gone anyway (as Martyn Green knows well), but I’m doing the classic football fan reaction and getting indignant on someone else’s behalf.
The benefit
What is the benefit? To you and I, nothing. There’s no benefit at all. To the club, there’s obviously a financial incentive, and I’m led to believe that is around £30,000, in addition to whatever money comes in from the attendance. Given that the club rely on the cups to drive revenue, it is probably a good thing that some extra money is coming in, seeing as we didn’t get a favourable draw. There’s an outside chance that with it not being selected for television here, the crowd might be a few hundred more than it would have been previously. I guess that’s about it for benefits though.
Where now?
I’m really not sure where the game goes from here. Maybe I’ve missed matches being selected for international broadcast in the past. Maybe it’s commonplace, and it is only affecting us now. However, it isn’t ideal when an English competition that has been competed in the UK for over 152 years is directly affected because it is decided someone halfway around the world should be able to watch it live.
I don’t like that at all.
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