ITV Champions league appreciation/memorial thread.
Neil_Harris
Posts: 1,822 Forum Member
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Tonight is the beginning of the last season of ITV's live coverage of the UEFA champions league.
The channel has been the UK's FTA broadcaster since the inception of this competition in 1992/1993 exclusively holding the rights until 2003.
Many a great moment has been witnessed on ITV with highlights including the last gasp winner for Man Utd in 1999 and Liverpool's historic comeback in 2005.
This is a thread to show your appreciation/share your memories of football's greatest domestic competition and the coverage given to it by ITV.
Can anyone help build a timeline (presenters/commentators) and also share landmark moments.
Also ITV seems to get a lot of stick for it's football coverage. Will anyone actually miss it?
Will this be your last season of Champions league football. Will you get BT? Can you afford BT?
The end of an era.
The channel has been the UK's FTA broadcaster since the inception of this competition in 1992/1993 exclusively holding the rights until 2003.
Many a great moment has been witnessed on ITV with highlights including the last gasp winner for Man Utd in 1999 and Liverpool's historic comeback in 2005.
This is a thread to show your appreciation/share your memories of football's greatest domestic competition and the coverage given to it by ITV.
Can anyone help build a timeline (presenters/commentators) and also share landmark moments.
Also ITV seems to get a lot of stick for it's football coverage. Will anyone actually miss it?
Will this be your last season of Champions league football. Will you get BT? Can you afford BT?
The end of an era.
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Comments
How long will BT have it for?
I just had a terrible thought, I don't think I can face Owen commentating on those games :eek:
Interesting... just how will that work?
They have only guaranteed to show one game per British team FTA., so in theory they could show each team once in the early rounds and thats it. Oh, and the final as well.
I assume the BT Sports 1 channel will be unencrypted on the night.
not as if the CL is that exciting nowadays anyway, it's just a big closed off party for the big clubs to see which one wins. Bit of a shame to see ITV lose it after 20 odd years of being the FTA broadcaster but that's what happens when you put a huge bid in that UEFA can't reject
Tyldesley's commentary on the last few minutes of the 1999 Champions League final is one of the great pieces of modern football commentary in my view.
I do have a question which may or may not have been covered in the thread which started when the deal was announced but there's too many pages to look through to find a possible answer.........with BT having exclusive coverage of the CL and EL, what will happen as far as for example BBC News, Sky Sports News goes in terms of the amount of action they can/can't show on their news bulletins? Oh and I think it's a big disappointment that there won't be any FTA highlights like we currently get. Basically means "get BT or get absolutely no coverage/action shown of the main European club competition" which personally I think is poor.
You'd think UEFA would want lots of money for the live coverage, but also the FTA highlights as it means more people watching (eg in this country, Liverpool v Barca on ITV might get at a total guess, 5m viewers, so ITV (and the grounds, UEFA etc can ask for more money from sponsors around the ground as more people will be watching, yet on BT it might get a couple of million viewers.
ITV have highlights.
UEFA hired TEAM to design the graphics and visuals. The starball logo, which has been used since 1994-95, was intended to highlight the eight teams, one for each star (because back then group stages were two of four). UEFA also created an anthem and signed up sponsors like Nike, Mastercard and Amstel to boost income. They unified kick-off times too.
When ITV showed Leeds against Stuttgart in September 1992, they used their own graphics. Ian St John was the presenter and they had Bryan Robson in the studio, I'm sure there's footage on YouTube. Once the Leeds game was over, they televised second half coverage of Manchester United's UEFA Cup game against Torpedo Moscow.
Yes, I thought he was quite good throughout that season. The Cole-Yorke goal and "Full speed ahead Barcelona!" against Juventus.
Tyldesley gets plenty of stick, but some of his goal calls in the final do evoke good memories. Gerrard against Milan ("Hello, hello -- here we go!") and Campbell a year later.
Right ok, just wasn't sure re the news channels etc. That'll be awkward for SSN especially post match on CL nights (wonder if it also means on Soccer Special they can't have people in the studio watching the games on a screen, same as happens with the FA Cup).
Re ITV having highlights, I may have missed that, I thought BT had everything for both competitions including exclusive highlights, so many thanks for that clarification.
Was the Leeds/Stuttgart tie the one that got replayed in the Nou Camp?
It'll be different for the Champions' League because all the games will be live in the UK (I would hope) so the pundits should just be able to watch one or other of the BT channels...which would be slightly ironic.
It's more or less the same as they did during the World Cup - the pundits in the studio will have been watching BBC1/ITV.
shortly followed by
"Name on the trophy"
two great lines from Clive in 1999
Can there do that on freeview?
Yes it was...
Be interesting to see the number of games ITV have shown per team.
I get the feeling Man U would be highest and maybe of those usually in the Champions league with Arsenal 2nd.
Cannot remember too many from Chelsea - unless its been in the knockout stages.
That would be surprising, the whole point of BT spending all that money is to get people to sign up. The more stuff they show FTA, the less incentive there is for anyone to subscribe.
Man Utd would be by far the highest.
They were in it for most seasons and reached 4 finals, I would guess Arsenal 2nd, Liverpool 3rd.
"In 1999, ITV acquired exclusive live rights to broadcast the Champions League in a deal worth £299 million"
Was it not exclusive before that then?
No, not until they get at least a temporary Version of BTsports on freeview (it only has to be one channel and could be a RedButton Stream).
They also can get a arrangement with channel which already is on freeview to simulcast the BTsport broadcast. (I would imagine someone like CH4 or CH5).
They also could spare freeview completely out, and only show it on satellite and cable.
On satellite the question is: Will they really broadcast FTA and be available on freesat, or will it be only available with a Sky card and be FTV (like CH5 HD some time ago).
Then again, he probably isn't watching it.
Though at the same time, perhaps they felt the need to promise decent FTA exposure in the first place in order to win the rights exclusively? I suppose as with anything like this the reality is a lot of people don't follow the exact subtleties that closely. I'm sure quite a few people will be attracted by BT advertising exclusive coverage of the Champions League (though if you have to pay for it as seems likely I'm not sure I'll follow - I think the group stages can often be a bit overrated (though less so now Liverpool and City aren't seeded) and quite a lot of the time I'm at a Reading game anyway. If the semis and final are FTA there's only the last 16/quarter-final matches I'll probably be really interested in and I could always just go down the pub/go round a friend's for that.)