What Sky Sports can learn from…Sky Sports
The EFL season is back upon us and the Premier League is not far behind. We will soon be hearing the unlikely Manc and scouse double act of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher passing their verdicts on matches. At some point they will be covering the black cats and I’m sure they’ll have done a ton of research into our rise through the leagues (awful lot of sarcasm here).
This summer despite no men’s euros or world cups it’s been a brilliant summer of sport. The Women’s Euros, the Lions tour, the Under 21 championship and the England Test series against India. It’s been a great summer for British sport and some of the coverage has been brilliant. For me, most notably in the Cricket. If you watch Sky Sports Cricket coverage you are presented a package designed to demonstrate unconditional passion for cricket and the ability to debate the positives and negatives of the sport without shouting each other down or falling back on cliches. For every articulate point made by a pundit on the Premier Leagues coverage it’s quickly followed up by a quirky remark either about or by Roy Keane. Or something about how “in the old days it wasn’t like this” and quite frankly, I don’t feel like I learn anything from Gary or Jamie or any pundit for that matter.
What I do enjoy and learn from is cricket punditry. It’s presented by people who clearly adore the sport, the pundits are all multi skilled in presenting and providing insightful analysis and boy do they know cricket. I honestly think with the Premier League a lot of the “research” is done about an hour before the show. It just feels so half arsed sometimes. We are about to move into Day 5 of the 5th test where all 5 tests have gone the full 5 days. At no point have I watched the analysis or video packages and found myself changing the channel out of boredom. The camaraderie and togetherness of the cricket pundits is also evident, they are all good friends who aren’t afraid to disagree with each other.
So what could Sky Sports do differently in their premier league coverage? Well for me lose the cliches, don’t over structure your coverage and let debate flow, don’t chase likes and clicks, don’t be afraid to criticise but also give out praise where it’s due. Most importantly, work with players earlier in their careers to help them move into punditry. Stuart Broad retired in 2023 and he’s just a natural in presenting and punditry. He just blends in so well and i think it’s because he’s been allowed to grow naturally over time. One of the big topics in cricket this summer has been the use of substitutions. In Cricket, if a player is injured you can’t replace him, unless it’s a concussion substitution which makes no sense, however, India’s wicket keeper suffered a broken foot and came out to bat otherwise you’re batting with 10 instead of 11. England pace bowler Chris Woakes dislocated his Shoulder while fielding. Again, he’s said he will bat if needed.
The debate of substitutes has been fascinating as no one seems to have the same opinion. There’s concerns of gaming the system or bringing someone in to benefit their game (an example might be subbing in a spin bowler for pace bowler because the game suits a spin bowler). The otherside of the argument is should India’s wicket keeper or Chris Woakes risk further injury by playing on? Should a duty of care take over?
At no point has the debate turned sour, at no point has anyone been called names, at no point was debate had for clicks or likes online. Just pure and simple friendly debate. I’ve never seen the same happen when people talk about VAR, it always quickly turns drab and pointless. For me, VAR needs to learn from other sports like cricket, referees should ask for a review from the VAR and he should be in the stadium not hiding in a bunker. I also think there needs to be a “referees review” introduced where the referee is allowed to review the monitor without VAR, he can ask for advice but he should not be “called to a monitor” to be told he’s wrong.
Back to the coverage, another aspect that frustrates me is the lack of knowledge pundits have. It’s all cliches and whatever happened over the last week or 2. It’s just so surface level that fans can talk about. What we want is insight, what we want is analysis. If you look at cricket they will analyse their bowling action and how it’s changed, how they bat differently to 6 months ago, their first class record. It’s so in-depth that you get to know players. You have experts analysing experts and it’s so refreshing.
However, because of the modern world we are subject to presenters looking at Roy Keane and saying “go on Roy say something funny” and it’s just boring. I want to see footballers talking about footballers in depth. My honest advice to Sky is simply do better. I used to watch the build up on Monday Night Football when it first started with Gary Neville because they talked football. They talked about how football has changed and how players have improved. Thiery Henry talking about how Pep played with his Barcelona squad was fascinating.
Now it’s just boring cliches which exist on Social Media and maybe I’m an old dinosaur now, maybe I’m out of touch but surely there are kids out there that want to learn? Surely there are adults out there who play Sunday league who still want to improve? I hope that one day we can move past influencers and TikTok but for now I don’t see anything changing.
