It’s been a great revenue stream for many Scottish Premiership clubs, particularly when hosting Celtic or even theRangers and it has allowed Celtic to continue to offer the Pass to Paradise to season ticket holders for an additional year, after the the unbelievable effort from the Celtic support in selling out season tickets for all 60,000 seats at Celtic Park despite having little or no prospect of actually seeing a match at Paradise.
And many supporters who cannot access away tickets on a regular basis have been happy enough to pay for the legally supplied streams for away matches against the likes of Aberdeen, Ross County Motherwell, Hibs and St Mirren allowing these clubs to benefit from a much needed additional revenue stream while opening up the action to Celtic or indeed theRangers supporters wanting to watch the action in the title race.
And Celtic this season continued to provide the Pass to Paradise facility to season ticket holders for all Scottish Premiership home fixtures while opening it up further to show the recent Celtic FC Women v Hibs match at Celtic Park and next Tuesday’s Glasgow Derby when the Celtic B team play their Ibrox counterparts at Paradise.
There is of course a sizeable audience out there for illegal streams and it looks like that is going to be the only option for many fans if they want to catch the action from away games from next season onwards, of the game isn’t being shown on Sky Sports or there is no chance of getting an away ticket.
Yesterday in an exclusive interview with The Press and Journal, SPFL CEO Neil Doncaster signalled the ending of the current arrangement and thanked Sky Sports for their consent in allowing streams on Pass to Paradise and the like to happen over these two Covid-affected seasons.
“We’re very grateful for the help Sky Sports have given us over the past two years, allowing our clubs to stream games,” Doncaster said.
“Effectively there has been a suspension of article 48, which is the blocked hours. The blocked hours mean you can’t broadcast between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday.
“I would expect blocked hours to resume from this summer and we’ll return to a world where you need to attend the game to see it.
“But football broadcasting remains an ever-changing landscape.”
What these two years has shown Scottish football is that there is perhaps a different way of maximising the revenue from their fixture list by achieving large audiences through an own channel operation so that clubs of all clubs could watch matches like on a pay per view or subscription basis.
The game is changing all the time and the Covid crisis has had an impact on that For instance allowing five substitutions rather than three has come in as a response to the pandemic – and yet again on Sunday at Ibrox we witnessed how this benefits Celtic invariably the club with the strongest bench – and we are now looking at the introduction of VAR.
The Sky Sports contract has a few years remaining so Scottish football has a chance to consider the alternatives and that could take us back to an own channel solution for the Scottish Premiership clubs. As Neil Doncaster said in his conclusion “football broadcasting remains an ever-changing landscape.”
What is clear is that Celtic now have their own data on how successful Pass to Paradise can be for a season when there were no fans and also one when the stadium was selling out every week after a Covid-lingering start – and an audience still tuned in on the Pass to Paradise.
One final point, the way we watch football now is clearly going to be different in five years and ten years from now. The current arrangement clearly does not benefit Scottish football when you compare it to even the revenues being achieved by English Championship sides. This could be our chance to change that once and for all.
It is time to consider the way forward now. TV deals are not designed to help Scottish clubs. SKY are opportunistic in their approach and clubs would be better insisting on going their own way with streaming, when the current deal ends. Arrangements can easily be made to the benefit not only on my club, but of other clubs throughout all the leagues.