Back To The Future: How Sky Changed Football Forever

In February 2007, FourFourTwo marked its 150th issue with a number of features on 'The Men Who Changed Football'. But as Jonathan Wilson notes, it's not all about the Wengers, Cantonas and Bosmans â thanks to Sky and the Premier League, perhaps the most seismic shift in football's history came off the pitch...

Way back in 1994, when FourFourTwo came mewling and puking into the world, football had been a whole new ball game for only two seasons. People were just getting used to calling the top division âÂÂthe PremiershipâÂÂ, Manchester United were coming to terms with winning back-to-back league titles after 26 years of dearth, and the Sky revolution was in its infancy. Going to the pub to watch a game still seemed oddly eccentric, big screens were virtually unheard of, and the prudent were still waiting to see how things went before splashing out on a dish. Yet even amid the uncertainty, it was obvious that the scale of SkyâÂÂs project was extraordinary.

In that 1994-95 season, Sky screened 60 live Premier League games out of a total of 143 live matches in all competitions. There were Sunday games and, to the consternation of conservatives the country over, there were Monday night games with fireworks and cheerleaders. âÂÂWe had to sell,â explains Richard Keys, who has anchored over 1,000 games for Sky. âÂÂWe had to get in peopleâÂÂs faces, we had to make it exciting. We werenâÂÂt lying back and inviting people to join in â¨if they wanted to; we were selling.âÂÂ

And boy, did they sell. It was brash, it was noisy and it was colourful â and that was just Keysâ wardrobe. The growth of European football rather curtailed the Monday experience, but Sundays now seem empty without two live Premier League games (not to mention two Spanish matches in the evening). Then there are the lunchtime and tea-time pay-per-view offerings on a Saturday. Last season, Sky showed 438 games in all competitions; this season they expect the figure to be nearer 450.

Even Andy Gray admits that we may be reaching a point where there is too much football on television â although, as he points out, we do have an âÂÂoffâ button â but the deeper concern within football is the reliance on Sky. Despite the arrival of Setanta to break their exclusivity [That went well â Hindsight Editor], Sky paid ã1.2 billion for the Premier League rights for 2007-10. Nobody has forgotten the impact of the collapse of ITV Digital on Football League clubs, and the perception now is that there is a need to keep Sky sweet.

The truth, though, is that certainly in the early days, Sky needed football as much as football needed it. The growth of both in the âÂÂ90s was the tale of a happy symbiosis. âÂÂSky came at the right time for football, just at the time of the Taylor Report when clubs must have been wondering how they could ever afford the improvements,â says Andy Melvin, now the Deputy Managing Director (Production) of Sky Sports but from 1991-99 its Executive Producer of Football, responsible for all live coverage.

It should not be forgotten that in 1992, BSkyB was losing ã10m a week. In 1993, having secured Premier League rights, they recorded a ã62m profit. As BSkyBâÂÂs former Director of Sport David Hill once said, âÂÂFootball is first, second and thirdâ in satellite televisionâÂÂs appeal. The most recent figures show that 8.2m Britons subscribe to Sky for ã3.2bn; most â¨of those have said that Premier League football is the main reason for their subscription.

ItâÂÂs not just the quantity of football on television that has changed since the Sky revolution. When Sky won the rights, there were those who saw barbarians at the gates, but whatever other criticisms may be cast at them, the quality of their coverage has transformed the way we watch football. âÂÂWhen we started, the BBC and ITV were in the comfort zone,â Melvin says.

Melvin had offered Andy Gray the chance to work as a presenter at Scottish Television, only for the forward to sign for Rangers and alienate half his audience. Convinced of GrayâÂÂs media skills, though, he had no hesitation getting him involved at Sky.

âÂÂMy first instruction to Andy was, âÂÂDonâÂÂt tell me what I can see; tell me what I canâÂÂt see,âÂÂâ Melvin explains. âÂÂHe pounced on that immediately and knew what I meant. When the first replay comes in, the commentator had better be finished what heâÂÂs saying, because GrayâÂÂs then [claps his hands] smack! We used that ability to do something that had never been done before. There were so few live games, and those that were on TV began five minutes before kick-off and went off air five minutes after the final whistle. There was no substance, but people took it because they knew no better.âÂÂ

Time, clearly, was an issue â and the one thing a specialist sports channel has is time â but even now, when other broadcasters are devoting increasingly large slots to football, their analysis too often exists in the category Gray mocks as the âÂÂgreat cross, great header, great goalâ school of punditry. At least one terrestrial channel has warned its presenters not to go too deep for fear of turning off a non-specialist audience, â¨a notion Keys finds astonishing.

âÂÂWhy do you think that a wider audience doesnâÂÂt want to know?â he asks, incredulous. âÂÂIf you can can educate a greater audience, then youâÂÂre doing your job. Just keeping it superficial isnâÂÂt the right way at all. Do we present news bulletins in a superficial manner because lots of people might not watch? No, we present them in a way that is respectful to the public.âÂÂ

The increasing depth of specialist knowledge is a feature of the proliferation of television channels. âÂÂThe more channels there are, the more people can pick and choose the things that interest them,â confirms Dr Jon Adams of the London School of Economics, who specialises in the study of the transfer and popularisation of knowledge. âÂÂThat means that an individual may know about fewer things, but probably knows more about them. From the broadcasterâÂÂs point of view, the lowest common denominator isnâÂÂt so low now.â Flicking onto ESPNâÂÂs Dead Good Sport channel offers a pertinent illustration: much of what passed for commentary before 1990 now sounds patronising, or trite.

Yet the realisation that there was a public appetite for tactical analysis came to Melvin and Gray almost accidentally. âÂÂAndy and â¨I were drinking one night,â Melvin recalls. âÂÂHe was drinking Rolling Rocks and I was drinking San Miguels, and this place being what it was, the bottles were lying on the table. We were talking football, and I was asking questions and he was explaining the 4-4-2 system, the sweeper system, and so on. The brown bottles were defenders and the green ones were attackers and we were aware â because heâÂÂs loud at the best of times, and especially when heâÂÂs had a drink â that people were watching and listening. The next day I said to him, âÂÂDo you realise what we did last night?â and he said, âÂÂYep. ThattâÂÂs what weâÂÂve got to give them.âÂÂâÂÂ

SkyâÂÂs innovations have now been copied the world over, and not just in terms of GrayâÂÂs tactical analysis.Soccer Saturday has been a huge, if unlikely, success. âÂÂItâÂÂs radio with pictures,â said Keys. âÂÂItâÂÂs a watch. ItâÂÂs addictive. ItâÂÂs the ultimate form of flattery that everybodyâÂÂs copying it.â Football First has added another string. âÂÂIf youâÂÂre a Charlton fan you used to be grateful for two minutes on Match of the Day and âÂÂThank you very much, BBC,âÂÂâ says Melvin. âÂÂNow you can switch on Football First and get your 50-minute edited highlights.âÂÂ

Their problem is that Sky has become too successful; that it is so associated with the gameâÂÂs âÂÂ90s boom that it is blamed for many of the difficulties or irritations that have resulted from it. It is a little over two years since The Observer ran its âÂÂThe Game That Ate Itselfâ campaign, which claimed that the fan was being replaced by the consumer and that supporters were being ripped off. At the heart of that process was television.

The scheduling of games is a persistent gripe. It is rare now that more than half a weekendâÂÂs programme kicks off at the traditional time of 3pm on a Saturday. It is easy to blame Sky for that, but it is equally true that they can only offer to screen the game; the clubs have the final decision.

Two examples spring to mind. Last season [2005-06], Manchester City and Everton were due to meet in a tea-time game, only for Everton to go out of the Champions League, leaving them with a UEFA Cup tie to play on the Thursday evening. They refused to play two games in two days, but with both clubs unwilling to forgo the pay-per-view money, the match was re-arranged for 11.15 on the Sunday morning.

This season, Newcastle preferred to play Sheffield United less than 48 hours after their UEFA Cup victory in Palermo than miss out on the television revenue. They lost 1-0, sparking fansâ protests against the board. If clubs are chasing money rather than results, clearly there is something â¨very wrong, particularly in a case where  â¨a managerâÂÂs job is under threat, but is that SkyâÂÂs fault for making the offer? Or the clubâÂÂs fault for snatching at it?

âÂÂIn all the time IâÂÂve been here, I can categorically tell you weâÂÂve never asked for a kick-off time to be changed,â says Keys. âÂÂBut if you want everybody kicking off at 3pm on a Saturday, youâÂÂre not going to see the likes of Klinsmann, Gullit, Cantona â the best players in the world â coming here.âÂÂ

That is perhaps a touch disingenuous â Sky must have matches played at times when people will watch them (they are still prevented from broadcasting live games at 3pm on a Saturday), and would not pay the vast sums they pay if they were not â but it does hint at the more general truth that a financially successful league does not happen without compromise.

The complaint about kick-off times is partly nostalgic (although the regular 3pm kick-off only became possible throughout the season with the advent of floodlights in the early âÂÂ60s), and partly to do with the problems for away fans of getting to games. This is where scheduling becomes a balancing act: generally speaking, the greater the number of away fans, the better the atmosphere; and the better the atmosphere, the better the game â or at least the better the perception of the game, which is effectively the same thing.

El-Hadji Diouf, among others, has spoken of the importance of having a stage on which to perform, comparing himself to an actor needing a vast and expectant audience to produce his best. In Egypt at the African Nations Cup last year, organisers were so concerned by the possible debilitating effect of empty stands that they bussed in army recruits to fill the spaces.

There is a sense in which Sky â or any television â needs away fans because without them the product is diminished. âÂÂWhen you go to Old Trafford for a cup tie, itâÂÂs a totally different atmosphere, and in an ideal world youâÂÂd love for them to be able to cater for that level of away support on a weekly basis, but those guys arenâÂÂt going to turn up on a weekly basis,â says Keys. âÂÂYouâÂÂve got to be realistic in that respect. It wasnâÂÂt happening; grounds werenâÂÂt full.âÂÂ

And whatever complaints there may be about the changes in the game since the advent of the Premier League, it canâÂÂt be denied that attendances are up, dramatically. Last season may have seen a drop of 0.06%, but the average Premier League attendance was still 33,873, higher than the 24,271 of 1994-95, FourFourTwoâÂÂs first season. That figure may look low now, but âÂÂ94-95 was the ninth successive season that attendances had gone up. What is also interesting about those figures is that although the Premier League, all-seater stadia and Sky accelerated the process, the growth in the popularity of football had actually begun far earlier.

Of course, just because people are going to games does not mean that the atmosphere is good, and anecdotal evidence would suggest that it has got worse over the past decade. Yet if Sky can be blamed at all for the dwindling atmosphere in our grounds, it is only in as much as their money has hastened the change in the gameâÂÂs culture rather than provoking it.

SkyâÂÂs money created the Premier League in its present form, but the gentrification of the game had begun before that. Most clubs had a fanzine by 1990, and Fever Pitch emerged from that culture. Then there were GazzaâÂÂs tears and the Taylor Report. Sky and the potential of satellite television was certainly not the only factor in the football boom, but it was perhaps the crucial one. Take out any other feature and the boom would probably still have happened; take out Sky and its money, and it could not have. That money, along with Champions League revenues, has led to the self-perpetuating elite, but itâÂÂs not Sky who distributes the television money â itâÂÂs the Premier League.

That said, SkyâÂÂs impact is not simply to do with footballâÂÂs direct income from rights; it is the indirect income from advertising, sponsorship and exposure. Without the constant promotion of the Premier League, would so many fans â particularly those fans from wealthier sections of society rather than those from which football traditionally drew its support â go to games? Without them, would ticket prices be so high? Lord Justice Taylor saw a âÂÂreasonableâ price for a ticket in 1990 as ã6, which even taking inflation into account equates to around ã12 today. Would shirt sales be so important? That commercialisation, that policy, to quote The ObserverâÂÂs sports editor Brian Oliver, of âÂÂputting the football consumer ahead of the football fanâ may grate, but itâÂÂs hard to see how Sky can be blamed. Surely we donâÂÂt want them to give football less money?

If they did, there would be fewer top players in our league, the standard would be lower and our clubs would be disadvantaged in Europe. Progress always comes with compromise, and, as Keys says, would we really swap what we have now for âÂÂa ã2.50 ticket and a cold pieâÂÂ?

From the February 2007 issue of FourFourTwo. Subscribe!

The frontman:RICHARD KEYS
A fixture on the TV-am couch in the âÂÂ80s, Keys joined Sky in 1992, becoming the face of Super Sunday. With HDTV in mind, he recently had electrolysis on his hands.

Was the fact that you came from TV-am a problem in terms of credibility?
IâÂÂm not sure everyone was that keen on me getting involved at first, although IâÂÂd been a sports reporter before TV-am. â¨I was probably more sofa than sport at that stage, but sport was where my heart lay.

Is it important to have a journalist as a frontman?
ItâÂÂs critical. Young reporters should have a belief that thatâÂÂs where they can go. ThatâÂÂs not to say I donâÂÂt believe thereâÂÂs a place for ex-sportsmen. David Gower does a superb job on our cricket, so it is possible.

How critical has your relationship with Andy Gray been?
HeâÂÂs improved my understanding of the game. HeâÂÂs a genius. ItâÂÂs really sloppy and easy to say, âÂÂGreat cross, great header, great goal.â Andy tells me something different. How did the cross get in? Why wasnâÂÂt the fella marked at the back post? Could the keeper have done better? ItâÂÂs not critical; itâÂÂs observational, instructional.

What have been your highlights?
The first title success Man United had, we had Denis Law and Bestie, and we watched them celebrate for an hour. Believe it or not, it was fantastic television.

Best guests?
Graeme Souness is a stunning contributor. And Cloughie once told David Livingstone off. âÂÂCan I ask you a difficult question?â says David. âÂÂYoung man, you couldnâÂÂt ask me a difficult question if you tried.âÂÂ

Any nightmare guests?
A former national team manager who joined us on a Champions League night and wasnâÂÂt very warm. When the game finished, I popped into the toilet and when I came out he was gone. He was typically efficient. He won record caps for his country. [Gray: âÂÂIt was Lothar MatthausâÂÂ].

The analyst: ANDY GRAY
A celebrated striker with Wolves, Villa and Everton, Gray joined Sky at the advent of the Premier League and has become English footballâÂÂs most respected pundit.

WhatâÂÂs been SkyâÂÂs best innovation?
It sounds ridiculous because itâÂÂs so simple, but youâÂÂd never see football today without a score and a clock in the corner.

Any complaints about your analysis?
I remember Don Howe saying, âÂÂAndyâÂÂs not telling me anything I donâÂÂt knowâÂÂ. I wasnâÂÂt trying to. I was trying to tell the fans what they didnâÂÂt know. Football is a very simple game that gets complicated by coaches. My job is to simplify it. In the early days â¨I spotted a little run Teddy Sheringham did for Spurs. So we highlighted it. Teddy comes up to me the next week and says, âÂÂThanks very much, Andy. IâÂÂd been doing that for 10 years and nobody spotted it â now IâÂÂll never get away with it again.âÂÂ

Ever considered coaching yourself?
Yes, and there have been a couple of occasions in the past 16 years when â¨I might have jumped ship. I guess if IâÂÂm sat in my rocking chair at 75 IâÂÂll wonder whether I should have done it. As a player I was very thoughtful, and not just about my own game. In my day you either became a coach, ran a pub or sold insurance, and of those three, coaching would have been the most appealing.

Highlights in your time at Sky?
The first live Premiership game, Forest vs Liverpool, was a massive day. The last-day finish when West Ham played Man United and Blackburn played Liverpool, too. And we all talk about Liverpool-Newcastle, 4-3. Liverpool scored in the first and last minute and we had five goals and such drama in between. It encompassed everything you would want in a Premiership match.

Will the big four still be the same four in 2019 when FFT is 300 issues old?
If Abramovich jumps ship, no. Chelsea will shed players and finish sixth. United, Liverpool and Arsenal will still be there, because theyâÂÂre based on more solid foundations.

The pioneer: GABBY LOGAN
Daughter of former Welsh midfielder Terry Yorath, Logan joined Sky in 1996, becoming the first mainstream female football presenter, before moving to ITV [and BBC since].

When did you decide you wanted to be a sports broadcaster?
I was always glued to sport on TV but there were hardly any women doing those jobs. I didnâÂÂt want to be Des [Lynam] any more than I wanted to be Jeremy Paxman. I did work experience on newspapers and in newsrooms and I worked for local radio during my law degree, but although I did some sports reporting, I started at NewcastleâÂÂs Metro FM as a newsreader.

Did having a well-known dad help?
HeâÂÂs no networker, so I never asked him for any help, but I was used to seeing him with journalists and on TV and camera crews coming round, so it didnâÂÂt seem a bizarre thing. Then, when I was 15, I appeared on Blue Peter and thought live TV was the greatest thing. When I joined Sky, ex-players used to say hello because they knew my dad, but by then I was comfortable in that environment.

How did the move to Sky come about?
Someone on Metro Sport asked if I fancied doing touchline interviews at St Jamesâ Park. They previously had this 65-year-old guy trying to stop players outside the dressing room, and thought they might have more luck with a 22-year-old blonde. I was a bit naive, but you have to get your break somewhere. Richard Keys, who was covering a game for Sky, spotted me and a month later I was living in London.

Did you encounter any sexism?
IâÂÂm sure I did, but I was so focused that I didnâÂÂt really notice. I wasnâÂÂt that conscious of my gender because I had a female director, a female producer and a lot of women in the office, whereas at ITV I felt more like I was in the minority.

Do you see yourself as a role model?
Well, I do get female students asking what they should do next because they want to get into what I do. That makes you realise that girls are thinking, âÂÂI could do that.âÂÂ

The legend: GARY LINEKER
A legendary England striker, Gary Lineker became âÂÂthe new Desâ in 1999, having worked as a pundit and presenter for the BBC since retiring from playing in 1994.

How did the change from pundit to anchorman on Match of the Day come about?
I was saying the same things every week, so I started presenting on Five Live. Things fell nicely for me: Bob Wilson left Football Focus, Steve Ryder sat in while I learnt the ropes, then I popped into the chair. Des left for ITV and I got MotD! At first I was like a rabbit in the headlights. You have to be less opinionated as a presenter. But if I feel strongly about something IâÂÂll say so, as IâÂÂve done with England at times.

How much of an impact did SkyâÂÂs coverage have on the BBC?
Massive. It was refreshing then, but I donâÂÂt think theyâÂÂve moved on massively over the years â whereas I think weâÂÂre now right up there in terms of cutting-edge technology. We also have the advantage of no adverts.

Do you regret missing out on the Sky money as a player or are you happy to avoid the hype?
I lived through the hype of two World Cups, but itâÂÂs accelerated over the years. It isnâÂÂt going to slow down either, even though we keep saying it will. Yeah, it would be nice to have earned what they do now, but I do OK.

How has the football media changed?
When I was playing a TV crew at training was rare. Nowadays youâÂÂve got papers, websites, radio and magazines. It was like that at Barcelona every day. I remember thinking, âÂÂGod, this is so different.â Not now.

What are the biggest changes from a broadcasting perspective?
The volume of recorded games. When they put together a montage of my career, they play the same ones every time. Nowadays every goal scored is recorded.

When the Prem moved to ITV did you worry thatâÂÂd be the end for the Beeb?
Yes, but we fought back. The BBC have backed football, too. Our audiences during the [2006] World Cup were unbelievable.

Gray and Keys portrait: Steve Orino. From the February 2007 issue of FourFourTwo. Subscribe!

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