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Andy Townsend Leaving ITV

Jordinho

Jordinho

Martin Peters
Staff member
From the Mail:

ITV Sport, having lost their FA Cup and live Champions League and Europa League rights, will not be renewing the contracts of pundit Andy Townsend and presenter Matt Smith at the end of the season.

The decision was mutual with Townsend, one of the best operators in the difficult role of co-commentator.

He wants to work on live football and has offers from other international broadcasters.
 
BT has the exclusive rights to both CL and EL starting next season. If I hadn't already canceled my imaginary Sky subscription many times, I'd do it now.
 
Not sure if he is worse then Michael Owen or not. Both are frigging awful and can see (hear) Townsend ending up on BT next season unfortunately.
 
I watched the Madrid derby on a stream last night, and there was a Geordie commentating on the game for a US channel. British TV needs a mentalist like him to liven up football
 
Jordinho said:
BT has the exclusive rights to both CL and EL starting next season. If I hadn't already canceled my imaginary Sky subscription many times, I'd do it now.
Click to expand...

Hadn't heard. So from next season there'll be no CL on ITV? No EL on Thursday nights on ITV4?

Are you saying it won't be on Sky either?
 
This is from September, so I'm guessing the talks with ITV haven't been that successful.

Live Champions League football could remain on terrestrial television next season after BT Sport opened talks with ITV over sharing some of the 350 Uefa games it acquired for a record-breaking £897 million last year.

Telegraph Sport has learnt that discussions have taken place between the broadcasters that may result in BT subletting a certain number of Champions League and Europa League matches it holds the exclusive rights to from 2015.

BT sent shock waves through English football almost a year ago when it blew Sky Sports and ITV out of the water to land Uefa’s entire portfolio of live club football just months after launching its own dedicated sports channels. The bold move, seen as a major statement of intent by BT in its war with Sky, appeared to signal the end of decades of terrestrial coverage of European club matches.

However, having been one of the homes of the Champions League since its inception in 1992, ITV – which did retain the rights to highlights until 2018 – may now continue to be so at BT’s behest.

Such a move would be welcomed by millions of armchair fans who are not customers of Sky or BT and who reacted with dismay to the prospect of a competition widely regarded as being the best in club football being lost to terrestrial television.

ITV and BT refused to comment last night on the precise nature of the contact between them or the reasons why the latter might contemplate relinquishing its exclusivity on rights for which it paid more than double the value of the previous contract.

The £897 million price tag may itself be the reason, the media giant admitting last year it would be forced to charge a subscription for its Champions League coverage in a departure from its policy of making all its content free of charge to its broadband subscribers.

BT did commit to making certain matches available free-to-air across both the Champions League and Europa League, including both finals and at least one match per season involving each English club involved in the competitions.

There would appear to be a business case, therefore, for attempting to monetise those games by selling them to ITV, which in turn would incur a saving on BT’s own in-house production costs.

Any such deal would require the permission of Uefa, which would have to be convinced that subletting to another broadcaster was in its own interests, having previously given approval to a similar arrangement in Poland.

Being available to every household with a television in the UK has proven extremely attractive for Uefa’s sponsors, which do not enjoy the same reach on Sky and may have even less exposure on BT.

A BT-ITV tie-up would be ironic considering it is thought Sky itself contemplated that very move when bidding to retain the Champions League last year in order to satisfy Uefa’s desire for some level of free-to-air coverage.

It is also not the first time such an arrangement has been mooted, with BT and ITV having held talks two years ago which it was suggested may have led to live Premier League football being shown on terrestrial television for the first time.

That was shortly after BT’s move into sports broadcasting, which resulted in its shock capture of 38 Premier League matches per season for £738 million.

It has been at war with Sky ever since, the pair do everything possible to poach each other’s customers with the offer of a combined telephone, broadband and television service, so-called ‘triple play’.

Their latest skirmish ended in victory for Sky after the Telegraph revealed yesterday that it had retained the rights to the England rugby team’s next three tours to Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. The coup maintained the broadcaster’s spate of rights renewals or captures this year as it continued to bounce back strongly from BT’s Champions League triumph.

A bidding war is also likely over the next major rights package on offer, England’s autumn internationals, which include the warm-up matches next summer for the World Cup.

Sky and BT could battle it out as well for the International Cricket Council’s major tournaments, which were put out to tender in July. Those tournaments include the World Cup, Champions Trophy and World Twenty20 and winning them would represent BT’s first serious move into cricket broadcasting.

The media giant has been weighing up a bid for Spain’s La Liga, while Sky could respond by snatching Italy’s Serie A ahead of the biggest battle of them all, next year’s Premier League auction.

Everything else would pale into insignificance during a bidding process expected to break all records.

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/...Champions-League-and-Europa-League-games.html
 
Surely given ITV's lack of football next season, better news would've been Andy electing to stay with them? Who knows where he'll show up now.
 
He's awful at commentating, repeats himself, states the obvious and offers no insight whatsoever and oddly believes each side has multiple goals to score in.

I do hope he gets employment somewhere though, just a place where I don't have to listen to him.
 
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