The History of Football on TV

"They think it's all over........it is now" -
is probably the most famous football commentary line of all time coming from legendary commentator, Kenneth Wolstenholme who was referring of course to England's 4-2 victory over West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final.
That famous old game was in fact, believe it or not, screened 29 years after the first televised football match in 1937 and a far cry from how football on tv is shown today. Since the start of the Premier League in 1992, football on TV has become a very lucrative industry. Crucially for the Premier League clubs, it is understood that Sky TV has paid close to, or even exceeded £1.31bn to show live football on tv. Setanta Sports are now also a big player in the world of live football on TV leaving the big two terrestial channels ITV and BBC picking up the scraps of live cup games, having once been the main providers.

The early years - the history of association football on tv

In 1936, the BBC's television service was born, although it was nearly 12 months before the very first televised football match was shown but don't get too excited about finding out who the two teams involved were. Believe it or not, it was a specially arranged friendly match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury on 16th September 1937. The next game to be shown was the first international match between England and Scotland on 9th April 1938, and the first televised FA Cup final was, on 30th April the same year, between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End.

Coverage of football on television did not take off as first expected and for the next two decades the only matches screened were FA Cup finals and the odd England v Scotland match.

However, the advent of floodlighting led to the birth of the European Cup, designed as a midweek cup competition for the club champions of each European country in 1955. The newly formed British television station ITV saw televised football as an ideal way of gaining a share of the audience from their only rival broadcaster at the time, the BBC. The BBC meanwhile, started showing brief (5 minutes) highlights of matches on its Saturday-night Sports Special programme from 10th September 1955, until its cancellation in 1963. The first games featured were both from Division One - Luton Town v Newcastle United and Charlton Athletic v Everton, Kenneth Wolstenholme and Cliff Michelmore were the commentators.

Live football

An early attempt at live league football was made in 1960-61, when ITV agreed a deal worth £150,000 with the Football League to screen 26 matches; the very first live league match was on Saturday September 10, 1960 between Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers at Bloomfield Road. The match kicked off at 6:50pm with live coverage starting at 7:30 under the title The Big Game. A major blow to TV moguls was the absence of Stanley Matthews through injury, and the game ended 1-0 to Bolton in front of a half-empty stadium.

ITV withdrew from the deal after first Arsenal and then Tottenham Hotspur refused them permission to shoot at their matches against Newcastle United and Aston Villa respectively, and the Football League demanded a dramatic increase in player appearance payments. ITV showed the Nat King Cole Show instead, while ironically both matches received highlights coverage from the BBC on Sports Special.

However ITV moved again into football, albeit tentatively, in 1962 when Anglia Television launched Match of the Week, which showed highlights of matches from around East Anglia. The first match shown was Ipswich Town's 3-2 defeat at the hands of Wolves at Portman Road on September 22, 1962. Tyne Tees Television in the North East of England began broadcasting local matches soon after under the title Shoot. League football was soon to gain a nationwide audience once more. In 1964, the BBC introduced Match of the Day - initially broadcast on the new BBC2. The first match was Liverpool's 3-2 victory over Arsenal at Anfield on 22 August, and the estimated audience of 20,000 was considerably less than the number of paying customers at the ground. At the time BBC2 could only be received in the London area, although by the end of Match Of The Day's first season it could be sampled in the Midlands. The programme transferred to BBC1 in the wake of England's 1966 World Cup win and at last could be received by television viewers across the UK.

Demand for football on tv started to grow

The demand for football grew through the 1970s and early 1980s, and the decision to start screening live league matches was almost inevitable; a deal was struck for the start of the 1983-84 season and the first live league match since 1960 was screened on ITV, between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest, on October 2, 1983. Spurs would also feature in the BBC's first live league match at Manchester United on a Friday night a few weeks later.

By the late 1980s the value of live TV coverage had rocketed; while a two-year contract for rights in 1983 had cost just £5.2m, the four-year contract exclusively landed by ITV in 1988 cost £44m, a fourfold increase per year. There was now a situation where live football was on TV almost every Sunday afternoon from about November onwards, as ITV screened top-flight football most weeks and the BBC had the rights to the FA Cup that occupied other weekends.

With top flight football proving particularly lucrative, in 1992 the clubs of the Football League First Division voted to quit the league en masse and set up their own league, the Premier League. They eventually opted to agree a deal with Sky Sports rather than ITV or the BBC, meaning leading live league football was no longer available on terrestrial television (although matches from the First Division (previously Second Division) continued to be shown on a regional basis for a time by ITV).