Heard a very interesting advert on TalkSport today. It featured Kris Commons (I think that's his name, the bloke from the BT ads at any rate) reciting a poem about how the modern game has changed and the average fan has been priced out. It then goes on to say that there's still an affordable way to watch your football, by subscribing to the new BT offering of the Sky Sports channels.
Now don't get me wrong, I think Sky do what they do extremely well, but they and BT must think fans utterly stupid if they believe we'll fail to see the inherent connections and contradictions in this marketing approach. Part of the reason (not all, I readily accept, but certainly part) that fans have been priced out of going to the games in the first place is the huge amounts of money pumped into the game (the top flight in particular) by Sky when paying vastly inflated sums for the rights to screen the bloody games in the first place.
"Ah - so we've helped make the game so commercialised and expensive that you can no longer get to the games? Never mind, join our lament for the good old days and you can then pay us for the privilege of watching a sanitised and over-hyped version of the same product on telly. It's just the same as going, honest..."
I'm not saying that Sky putting money into the game was a bad thing. I'm just asking that we don't be taken for fools when the game we were watching long before Sky turned up is sold back to us as a 'bargain' by one of the original agents of its over-inflation.
Kris Marshall I believe his name is (doesn't Kris Commons play for Derby?) We now just need football clubs to offer over-priced telephone services and the circle will be complete.
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