As the Premier League sign a record £6.7bn TV deal with Sky Sports and TNT, there will be some in the SPFL who must be a little red-faced.
As explained by BBC Sport, the four year TV deal will see the broadcasting duo show 270 live matches per campaign from the 25/26 season.
Described as the “largest sports media rights deal ever concluded in the UK” it’s a gargantuan deal which sees just over £1.6bn poured into the Premier League each year. And that’s just from the UK.
Comparatively, Scotland’s deal, which is with Sky Sports, was heralded as a masterstroke by the head honchos at Hampden whose negotiating ability would make Del Boy cringe.
Scotland’s budget brokers struck a £150m deal with Sky Sports – much to the anger of then Rangers chief Stewart Robertson – over five seasons.
Coming into force in 2024, compared to England’s £1.6bn, Scotland will be earning £30m per season, or £1.57bn less than our counterparts south of the border.
A gap of some sort is justifiable, but we’re being sold a dummy if we’re to believe it should be so big. We’d laugh if only we could see the funny side.
Anti-Rangers rhetoric serves no-one
Scottish football might be eating itself alive with pathetic politicking and far from say “I hate to say we told you so”, the power brokers at Rangers must be pulling their hair out.
Those at the top of the Scottish game have been so obsessed with maintaining their own inflated salaries and downplaying the product that we have genuinely been left behind.
Rangers have been the loudest opponents but a national obsession with taking the opposite stance to the Ibrox club has contributed to keeping these guys in power and keeping the game pinned down.
Rangers dealt the SPFL a massive blow with cinch – a mind-bogglingly embarrassing endeavour which shows the professionalism of the organisation’s hierarchy up badly – and you’d barely even know it.
Whilst the rest of the game was rebranding Scottish football the cinch, laughing at Rylan’s gnashers and telling Rangers to get stuffed, the online car sales website was doing the bunk.
And that’s just part of the issue.
Premier League TV deal shows SPFL up
At a crucial moment in the international expansion of the game, in the development of TV rights at home and abroad, the likes of Neil Doncaster and Murdoch MacLennan stand accused of sleeping at the wheel.
That these gentlemen are still in their CEO and Chaiman roles at the SPFL respectively is some kind of cruel joke with this financial gap the most glaring example of a most terrible failure in Scottish football.
We have been hamstrung by a excuse-laden hierarchy who have enjoyed the champagne lounge at Hampden too long and scarcely done their jobs effectively.
The English game’s financial success is built on marketing – and part of the reason why we changed to a League One and League Two model – but we are always two steps behind.
Scottish football needs rooted and those running the game need shot of if we stand any chance of bringing the necessary investment into the country which keeps Scottish football relevant.
Every single one of them should be reading the Premier League headlines with deep, deep embarrassment but something tells us they’re already stockpiling statements protecting their place in Scottish football’s ivory towers.
This isn’t about Rangers, Celtic or anyone else getting the upper hand from the Premiership to League Two.
Fans deserve better and a quick glance south of the border is a damming indictment of the selfish shortcomings from those at the top of our game.
