Freebie Friday: Are BT Sport giving fair coverage to all?

A collaboration with fellow Substacker Machel St Patrick Hewitt

Welcome to Freebie Friday, the weekly free column for all subscribers to view and hopefully get a taste of what you can find behind the paywall should you upgrade to becoming a paid subscriber.

This week I opened the floor up on my Twitter page for ideas and some great ones came to light which I will use over the coming days and weeks. This one comes from a fellow National League fan in the form of Machel St Patrick Hewitt, a Bromley supporter who compiles their reports for the Non League Paper but more importantly is here on Substack and you can find his free blog on Bromley FC here:

Bromley fan Machel St Patrick Hewitt

Here is Machel’s view on whether BT Sport favour all the clubs when it comes to broadcasting or just the bigger clubs in the league, feel free to leave your comments after reading:

The widely held opinion in non-league circles is that the BT Sport deal has been great for the exposure of the National League. BT Sport has been broadcasting live and exclusive coverage of English football’s fifth tier since 2013 and the current deal will see live National League matches shown every week in a regular Saturday slot. 

In 2020 they signed a three year contract extension to guarantee exclusive rights to broadcast the National League until the 2023/24 season.  One would hope that a similar extension will be signed soon with the rights package due to end next season.  

That said whilst I would certainly echo the notion that BT Sport has been great for the league 10 years into the partnership it would be fair to say there is still room for improvement.

The financial renumeration may not be as great as some National League chairman hope but BT Sport are a flagship broadcaster with a national audience, on the surface that is fantastic for every club in the league.

Certainly in the seven years since Bromley got promoted to the National League it has been the TV exposure that has done more than anything else to improve the standing of the club on the local, national and global level. Yet at the time of writing despite Bromley sitting sixth in the National League they have featured in a televised live game once this season which is the bare minimum each club is afforded.

It begs the question who really benefits from the BT Sport National league coverage?

A cursory look at the month of February sees every game bar one featuring Wrexham, Chesterfield or Notts County.  Look, I get it. The ex-EFL sides with the big budgets at the top end of the table (and even some at the bottom) are the big draw in the league. But spare me the ‘simple economics’ argument  for me it’s a bit more insidious than that. If you pertain to be the primary broadcaster of a national league surely you have a duty to showcase the variety of teams within the league.

As much as an exec is likely pulling the strings and stating there is no value in showing Bromley vs anyone other than Wrexham/Notts/Chesterfield it devalues the faith the fans have in the broadcaster to be seen as a fair and impartial network.

On January 10^th Bromley were featured on BT Sport for the first time this season, away at Wrexham (of course!) but if you were a neutral watching that coverage you may have thought Wrexham were actually playing themselves.

The build up was largely focused on Wrexham to such a point that when Andy Woodman was interviewed it was with Becky Ives in the corner of the pitch. There is nothing wrong with Becky Ives by the way, I respect her craft but the whole thing felt like he and Bromley was a bit of an afterthought. An interview that had to be done for balance more than anything else.

On the other hand Phil Parkinson got the full interview pre and post-match with Matt Smith, Aaron McClean and Chris Hargreaves. This may sound like sour grapes but isn’t meant to be – for me it just served as a microcosm of my wider critique of BT Sport.

I will never doubt the broadcasting quality of the individuals working on the BT live games from Smith to Ives to Virgo etc but maybe a bit of introspection wouldn’t go amiss vis-à-vis the equity or lack thereof in the decision making.

Should Bromley or Wealdstone, for example, make the Vanarama National League Playoffs this season. How could BT Sport possibly claim to know anything about either side given they have featured a total of two times on the channel this season, that’s not a league broadcaster worthy of its name.

By no means am I asking for the Bromley BT Sport show but I don’t think it’s asking too much for more teams to receive a greater focus from time to time.  Or maybe I’m just naïve. Maybe this is always the way it has to be. It’s probably the same reason why Manchester United are often shown in the FA Cup ties on terrestrial television no matter the opposition. Big teams sell and that’s all TV networks care about.

The only way I’ll ever get to disprove this theory is the one season Bromley challenge for the National League title maybe then we’ll feature more than twice a season on BT Sport.

Agree or disagree? My thanks to Mash for providing this piece and if you want to join the debate leave a comment at the end of this piece, we’d love to hear your views.