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Liverpool dominate BT Sport

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Liverpool punditsFOOTBALL is coming back to our television screens. Even more football than ever before.

Sky Sports are screening 116 live Premier League matches, and have announced a string of changes and improvements to their broadcast plans.

They have front-loaded their programme, utilising 20 of their 38 picks to choose the best games for the first couple of months of the season.

BT Sport launched in slick and impressive style at 6pm on Thursday August 1st with football the centrepiece of a huge range of sports programming.

On weekends when Sky exercise their first pick, BT Sport is left with only a fourth pick. Sky have specifically ensured that BT aren’t able to show our rivals Man United for the whole of the first month of the season. We don’t care about United of course (except that we want them to always fail), but BT Sport could well end up with the best matches at the business end of the season.

This will be the first time anyone other than Sky has any top picks. Whether the £738m BT have paid for the rights to 38 Premier League games for 3 seasons is value for money can only be assessed later on in the deal, but from a fans perspective more live football is a good thing.

BT will also show Bundesliga, Serie A, Copa Libertadores, French Ligue 1 and Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) games alongside Europa League games and the Womens Super League (where Liverpool ladies are top of the table and favourites for the title).

Of Liverpool’s first 13 matches, 9 will be showed live, with BT Sport showing 3 (Stoke at Home, Newcastle Away & Everton Away) and Sky Sports showing 6 (Villa Away, United at Home, Swansea Away, Sunderland Away, Arsenal Away and Hull Away).
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I wrote recently, after Sky signed Jamie Carragher, of how Liverpool were dominating the world of football punditry. Sky’s Jamie Redknapp, Graeme Souness and Phil Thompson are all ready to join our former No.23 in the Sky studios. The BBC seem to still be sticking with their old guard, which includes former Liverpool defensive lynchpins Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson – albeit, a reduced role for Lawro.

With ESPN losing their rights it looked like we might lose a few former LFC stars from the punditry chairs. ESPN relied regularly on John Barnes, Kevin Keegan and Steve McManaman.

However, we seem to have at least matched, if not increased, the Liverpool presence in punditry with BT Sport.

Steve McManaman jumps ship to BT, he’s joined by former LFC keeper David James who played over 200 League games for the Reds, Michael Owen joins BT as a commentator on games, Gary McAllister joins for the SPL coverage and it was also nice to see Daniel Sturridge as a BT Sport ambassador (along with the less charismatic and very irritating Rio Ferdinand, and a few other Premier League players).

McManaman, despite being a boyhood Evertonian like best mate Robbie Fowler and leaving in acrimonious fashion to Real Madrid, is still a Liverpool supporter and has made his allegiances known frequently during his time at ESPN. Gary Mac, despite only a short stay at the club covering the famous Treble season in 2001, is well loved but is unlikely to be covering any Liverpool games as he focuses north of the border. The support of the other two former Reds is less of a certainty.

David James has played for many other clubs including Aston Villa, Manchester City and Portsmouth and his Liverpool days must seem a long time ago. Michael Owen who scored 158 goals in 297 games for Liverpool has not been so affectionate to the Reds in his comments over the years, and his reception at Anfield after he’d become a Manchester United player was vitriolic. However he is ‘meant’ to be objective, and now he is no longer under the payment of the Red Devils we’ll see with what fondness he recalls his long time at LFC, whom he joined as a wee 12 year old.

The new season is always exciting, but after arguably the biggest new channel launch on UK television (since Channel 5 launched in 1997), which is dedicated to Sport and chocka full of football, there is much more enjoyment to be had for footy fans in the British Isles. And I’m pleased that despite our relative lack of success on the field, we are at least continuing to maintain our dominance of the television.

Although, of course, we’d all rather have it the other way around.

You can catch more from me on my own blog: http://taintlessred.blogspot.co.uk/
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Gabriel Darshan (Writer) - aka Sutha Nirmalananthan aka TaintlessRed. I am a lifelong Liverpool fan who has followed the Reds from near (e.g. living in Kirkby) and far (e.g. living in Johannesburg), though am again living back home in the UK. I’ve watched football in stadia all around the world, from the Maracana to the Camp Nou, though Anfield will of course always be the greatest! I enjoy healthy football debate, preferring reasoned analysis based on sound evidence over gossip. I also write a blog at http://taintlessred.blogspot.co.uk/ on all things Liverpool FC and you can follow me on twitter @taintlessred

7 comments

  • TaintlessRed says:

    I wrote this article on Friday night, so a short update.

    Since then BT screened our WSL game against Arsenal (which we unfortunately lost) but also our Olympiacos game (BT will also screen our other preseason games, though we can also watch them online if u have an LFC online subscription).

    Michael Owen showed good knowledge during his commentary, and was very forthcoming in his praise of Stevie G, Coutinho and other LFC players, if not the club. David James struggled on debut, umming and ahing a lot, and barely stringing an audible sentence. You could tell Macca was an old hand at this punditry business, and even Gary Mac was pitch side.

    BT’s coverage was slick, and went off without a hitch (except for David James being so poor) and was decidedly more informal than Sky (who are always in tidy suits).

    • stevieG says:

      Better than ITV , whom have the worst commentators and idiotic dull pundits by a mile
      …but BT are nowhere near as good as sky or BBC

      • TaintlessRed says:

        I have the impression that the BBC’s football coverage is going downhill. Lawrenson’s incessant negative moaning and match of the day being more about chin wagging rather than insightful analysis. Alan Hansen (who was the best pundit around years ago) is becoming a caricature of himself, more focussed on making fun of his fellow pundits. He needs to feel his job isn’t safe anymore, then he might get reinvigorated. Other pundits (that they can afford) are much of a muchness.

        The BBC’s coverage of the European championships and world cup before that were dissapointing given their much higher standards in previous decades.

  • Dennis says:

    Erm . Hasn’t ESPN changed its name to BTsport ? . I think so

    • TaintlessRed says:

      No. BT won the rights by beating Espn in the auction for the rights. BT has built their functionality from scratch – hiring many people with experience from American sports production. As a result Espn football focussed channel obvious ceased business and BT hired a number of their presenters (McManaman & Stubbs etc) but also operational staff. However they have totally new infrastructure based near the Olympic stadium. BT struck a seperate deal with Espn to show their remaining channel as part of their package.

      Espn is still a huge company in sports broadcasting. It just no longer shows premier league.

  • allaboutanfield says:

    I am so looking forward to the new season .

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