I’m barely half-watching Sheffield United play Manchester United from the relative peace and solitude of my Man Cave. It’s a mid table encounter and Sky have signalled its relative insignificance by giving main commentator Martin Tyler the afternoon off and sitting their second string commentator Rob Hawthorne next to Gary Neville, hoping their banter and enthusiasm will convince us this is a great game. They are not succeeding.
We know that Sky cannot show the main games all the time and are obliged to show the lesser teams from time to time. That’s why we’ve been served this absolute dud of a game on not very Super Sunday.
Unless you are a blade or a red, I would be surprised if you were getting much out of this game. Sheffield United have a nice line in hitting the channels (all the time) and who can blame them when United’s three centre backs are playing like they have never before met each other. Since one of them is the perennial sick note Phil ‘Whoops, I’ve fallen over again’ Jones, this is hardly a bad tactic. It’s the home team’s hoofball versus the away team’s clumsy defence and lightning quick attackers hoping to catch the blades on the break.
Before the game, Chris Wilder announced that, “Every game in the Premier League is an occasion”, a remark so stupid and meaningless you should struggle to get your head around it. No, Chris: its another game and a not particularly interesting one. But Wilder does what everyone who is part of the Premier League does: he hypes it up. He needs to. The Premier League is not as popular as it’s cracked up to be.
Perhaps, a million plus are watching this game, some quite possibly having it on as background noise, like me. In a country with a population of over 66 million, you can see the problem here. The Greatest League In The World™ (spoiler alert: it isn’t) is watched by a tiny percentage of the country. If anything, the Premier League is very unpopular.
As john Nicholson points out in his excellent book ‘Can We Have Our Football Back?’, most people will not pay a subscription to watch football on telly. They’ll watch Match of the Day and live FA Cup games for free on the BBC and they’ll watch England games for free on ITV, but very few people will pay to watch teams they are not interested in. I’ll watch a game as a neutral but I won’t get caught up in it and if something better is on, I’ll turn it off. Like most people.
Sky’s coverage is exemplary, arguably the best coverage of football you can get. But the product is not popular. And calling something unpopular ‘Super Sunday’ doesn’t make it super. Most games in the Premier League are anything but super. But don’t tell Sky.
