Originally Posted by seanwalford:
“Like the goals show a lot. But is the left hand bar with nothing but fixtures and adverts really necessary?”
To be fair to BT, I think it's more to do with shrinking the coverage to fit the scores along the bottom - just because of the way the aspect ratio is, there'd be empty space on the left, unless they centre the picture and have black bars on each side - so they might as well use the space for something. They do show time elapsed, team lineups and stats from whichever match is currently on live action as well.
After my criticism of the "L" on BTS Europe (which I still dislike) I can't believe I'm defending BT doing the same on another channel

In this case though, given what the programme aims to do, I think it's a good idea.