WE’RE told that the BBC had 18 million people watching the Royal Wedding and ITV six million.
In a poor third place was Sky who attracted less than one million viewers.
So why is it that Sky has sole and exclusive rights to live coverage of the Premier League of our national game, football?
A game that is watched and followed by millions of fans every weekend is only accessible to a limited audience.
Over the years Sky have reaped a lucrative benefit from this situation, they’ve been allowed to use Premier League football as a carrot to attract subscribers to what is, let’s be honest, a pretty mediocre TV output, relying on sport, films and the Simpsons mixed in with a lot of television dross.
So why has this been allowed to happen?
Between them, Sky and the Premier League have restricted top quality live football to a minority audience.
So why is this allowed to continue, when there is an easier and fairer solution?
For argument’s sake, let’s say that Sky pay £25million to the Premier League for exclusive rights.
Now if the Premier League had a contract with Sky, ITV and BBC, and each paid £10 million, straight away the League are making more money.
Then football fans would have the opportunity to see three live Premier League games every weekend, for instance, BBC on a Friday night, ITV on Saturday and Sky on Sunday.
This would be a much fairer system, and each game would be exclusive to that particular channel.
Football belongs to the people, all the people, Sky and the Premier League would do well to remember that.
PETER HUNT, West Moors, Ferndown
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