I don't think Neil is an ideal main presenter. I'd also like to see them introduce some new "experts" along the lines we saw occasionally last season.

It's all gotten very samey with Kev, Neil, Shaun, Cecil and Jeff over several seasons so some freshening up is welcome with me.

Yes it is very predictable, you can usually predict the in studio patter for the better part of the broadcast. Although aren't many sports in studio presentations on Sky like that? Rugby League certainly is, football and golf seem to rotate the same in studio hosts and guests.

I cannot see Sky with their ever decreasing budget on anything apart from Premier League, throwing much money or imagination at it. I'm certain the still look upon NFL as a fringe/minority sport, therefore it is low in their pecking order. I read somewhere that Thierry Henry is on a £4 million a year deal with Sky as their highest paid pundit, just imagine what they could do to their NFL programming if they threw that sort of salaries at it!

I expect that whatever Sky do, it will be on the cheap and/or lacking imagination. They seem to think it is just good enough nowadays to have the rights, well i personally think that is a lazy attitude and that is why coverage goes stale after a while.

Maybe they might drag Halling back away from the boxing, especially after that bore from the weekend. Lol

Nat Coombs and Mike Carlson would be an immediate upgrade over the current Sky crew. Mix in an ex NFL player, or rotate a few over the course of the season if no one wanted to move here for 5-6 months a year (call it career development before they land bigger gigs back in the US). As Nat and Mike have already hosted the graveyard slot matches on C4 I don't see why they wouldn't do the Sunday evening shift on Sky.

Is it really that difficult? Surely the powers that be at Sky must be aware of the comments on the NFL UK website if they don't read these forums. We're not asking for the next Des Lynam, just a host that can remember which teams are playing and the score, and a credible pundit. And can they please stop missing live game action because they have stuck with the blithering in the London studio too long.

Totally agree with all of that.

Sadly i don't think that Sky will, i'm not sure if they have hardly ever poached from other networks although Nat and Mike are probably freelance and free agents nowadays, and also they probably don't care what we think on forums, they should care, but they don't!

If Neil got the job, that would be it for me as far as Sky coverage goes!
Cannot stand him at all. He reminds me of that kid who hangs out with the bully and automatically thinks he is the bees knees. Smarmy and very punchable (Not his biggest fan as you may have gathered )
Nat Combs, hell yes!!

If Halling comes back, I won't tune in. I can't stand the petty little man.

I doubt he would want to though.

He has a cushy job on Sky Boxing so i doubt he would and IIRC, someone on here said he left NFL for the Boxing gig

I was under the impression Halling got fed up of the constant abuse from viewers and First Down readers and THAT was main reason he went to boxing.

Perhaps that was the case, but Halling was probably one of the more prominent freelance sports broadcast journalists in the country. He had all sorts of gigs across all sorts of channels, including Sky’s NFL coverage. Sky must have offered him a heck of a lot to give all of that work up to become their main boxing commentator, so I’ve always presumed that was the main reason.

I do find it a bit odd that as a Sky employee he has disappeared completely from their NFL coverage. While the boxing would take up a fair amount of time, I’m sure there would have been scope for him to return as an occasional presenter or pundit on the NFL. So there might well be an element of truth to that rumour.

He brought a lot of this on himself with the way he behaved.

That and he got tired of working 15/16 hours on a Sunday along with finishing at 4/5am in the morning 2 or 3 times a week (This being the era where Sky still had full studio coverage for TNF, SNF and MNF)

Still think the fallout from the week sky just showed Redzone instead of a game led to Halling leaving Sky. It's the fact that he just vanished, after so long without a word, I guess he could have chosen to not take part in the fantasy game but if he had left on good terms he would not have been out of place on there considering the rest of the "celebratory" line up. I also believe that having been so long the face of the NFL in the UK (along with Carlson) there would have been some sort of mention on the NFLUK website when it was known he was moving on.

Halling casually announced it in the middle of one of the weirdest posts in forum history, started by someone called Tamla who had randomly asked who would replace Halling even though there was no official evidence Halling was leaving.

Made weirder still by the possibility that Tamla may well be Halling's wife and it could have been posted by Halling himself on her forum account.

Halling is a freak.

Just playing Devils Advocate for a second. If we assume that Sky were doing NFLUKs bidding with the fake tweets relating to the International Series why not go the whole hog and facilitate a way where the pre game show is, say, the NFL Network pregame show and do away with the UK studio full stop?

Too much product placement on the NFL Network no doubt.

Did anyone see Reynolds popping up on Sky Sports News the other night with the first day of free agency news ?
He really did look awkward standing there reading from his mobile phone... and the amount of times he commented "he is a really good player" when another name was mentioned.
Sorry Neil, not your biggest fan.

Sky can show live programming..it is delayed or repeated that is hit by product placement...look at BT..ESPN...they show loads of live NBA programming.

But the problem is the cost to edit it all.
Watch the replays of US sports on BT Sport, its got blurring and cuts all over the place. The cost to do that isn't cheap and isn't quick either so my guess is Sky don't see the cost being worth it for the time

BT had a rebuke from OFCOM too after somebody complained about an in-vision (and in voice) promo for a bank; as its service wasn't available in the UK. (Which is why they BT globes appear randomly even when the programme is back).
Bet BT wish they hadn't covered the Little League Under 13's Baseball live!!

NFL network features segments such as the hosts actually stopping to eat pizza & put over Papa Johns. It's quite surreal the first time you see it. The half time shows on NBC feature a bit where the host introduces an ad for Toyota like it was any other clip related to the game.

I've had nfl.com gamepass for years and it's still odd.

I get that it can't be easy to manage it on a live broadcast, but that always looks really messy when they hastily throw up the BT Sport holding screen and then re-join the broadcast while one of the commentators is in the middle of a sentence.

Quite why you'd complain about that kind of thing as a viewer, I don't know!

Twitter has the rights to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games next season, apparently worldwide. (Presumably the same 10 CBS & NBC have 5 each of).

I can't figure out what this means. Will people be able to watch the games, wherever they are in the world, via Twitter? Is this over their phones, or over iPads etc as well? I can't imagine the US networks, Sky etc would be too thrilled if there is a viable alternative to watching through their channels.

Yes, that is correct. The same thing happened for one of the International Series games in 2015. The NFL have been quite vocal about this worldwide streaming for some time, so the US networks buying the rights would have been well aware of it when submitting bids. As for Sky, all the matches will be on in the middle of the night, and they used to get the TNF package as a freebie bonus on top of their main Sunday evening rights (not sure if they still do), so they won’t be losing too much sleep over it. Other than the staff working on it, natch.

What better way to combat illegal streaming than stream it for free yourselves, and rake a fortune in off advertising!

SKY's NFL coverage is very lazy, same with there Rugby League coverage, that i tend to switch to Redzone, at least SKY kept the International series promotion & discussion, to a minimum during the playoffs & super bowl, compared to previous years.

Thanks for the explanation. I think I heard that in the US this season the Thursday night games will be on CBS and NBC, so not on a subscription channel. Not too many people would choose to watch via Twitter as opposed to network TV, so the Twitter viewers will for the most part be people on the move who can't get themselves in front of a television. Added to which, for the most part the Thursday games have been bad match-ups, so it's not exactly (re-)selling off the rights to the crown jewels.