Uh-oh, Individual 2015 Wembley tickets go on sale on Monday. We know what that means: Sky Sports Coverage, on the second biggest NFL day of the year will go into full NFLuk infomercial mode, hard selling the games, getting people who want to see their name on screen to tweet in pointless questions about the 2015 games. Think they have less time to sell these before Goodell's State of the League pre Super Bowl address where he likes to say they have 'sold out'. Hopefully we'll see some live playoff football scattered amongst it.
It often makes me wonder about the relationship between NFLuk and Sky. It's always seemed very close, more so than any other broadcaster and sports administration I can remember in the UK. Does anyone know how much Sky pays for the rights? (if anything much at all?) It was interesting on the NFLuk/Sky Sports podcast the other week when retelling a story from the studio that Neil recalled Jeff, on wanting to talk about the blown call in the Lions v Cowboys game, asked him 'can we go off on the officials?'. In other words are we allowed to be properly critical which I thought was odd because I couldn't imagine Gary Neville, Stuart Barnes or Nassar Hussein needing to ask a similar thing. To me it was a strange mindset to have on broadcasting a sport? To me it just proved how the NFL is showcased on British TV, very similar to how it is in the US (eg Michaels and Collinsworth's embarrassing ode to the Mueller report/Goodell last Saturday night) where the broadcasters are very much in bed with the NFL.
It often makes me wonder about the relationship between NFLuk and Sky. It's always seemed very close, more so than any other broadcaster and sports administration I can remember in the UK. Does anyone know how much Sky pays for the rights? (if anything much at all?) It was interesting on the NFLuk/Sky Sports podcast the other week when retelling a story from the studio that Neil recalled Jeff, on wanting to talk about the blown call in the Lions v Cowboys game, asked him 'can we go off on the officials?'. In other words are we allowed to be properly critical which I thought was odd because I couldn't imagine Gary Neville, Stuart Barnes or Nassar Hussein needing to ask a similar thing. To me it was a strange mindset to have on broadcasting a sport? To me it just proved how the NFL is showcased on British TV, very similar to how it is in the US (eg Michaels and Collinsworth's embarrassing ode to the Mueller report/Goodell last Saturday night) where the broadcasters are very much in bed with the NFL.



