The Sport Thread

[Rdd]

Sky Sports Action to revert back to Sky Sports NFL for a week either side of the May Bank Holiday to cover the NFL draft.

[RhysJR]

Two major returns at the World Snooker Championship this morning. First, a crowd at a sporting event in the UK for the first time this year. Second, Hazel Irvine returns to the BBC covearge for the first time since the Masters in January 2020. Great to have her back!

https://twitter.com/Snooker_Chat/status/...4069094403

[DeMarkay]

I see that there is a BBC Sport DOG in the bottom right hand corner during Match of Day on BBC One.

[Rdd]

During build up? Been there a while, they take it away for the game.

[Brekkie]

The MLS football on Freesports has a hideous DOG (clashing with the MLS DOG) promoting Rangers v Celtic on Premier Sports tomorrow.

[thegeek]

Having a look at BBC One's schedules for the weekend, I've noticed that MOTD is followed by a separate FA Cup Highlights show, in a 14 minute slot. I know that the MOTD brand is sometimes used for other competitions (eg MOTD Live for the Euros and the World Cup), but is there something contractual which says that the FA Cup has to stand alone, and can't be in the same programme as the Premier League?

No, but the Premier League coverage is only available on iPlayer for seven days, whereas the FA Cup can be made available for 30 days - so doing it this way means the FA Cup coverage is still available after the Premier League coverage has expired. It will be seamless on screen, of course.

you are, of course, quite right - it was one programme billed as two events. It's not quite so seamless on iPlayer, where MOTD finishes mid-sentence and then picks up on the second programme. It also finished with a black and white BBC Sport copyright screen, which I guess was for the funeral.

[Big G]

Watching the Yan, Gould match on the red button. They only played eight frames yesterday, and at the moment Gould needs two snookers with three balls left on the table, and he's carrying on. I can see this match not finishing this session and the players coming back tonight to finish.

G

[TIGHazard]

Having a look at BBC One's schedules for the weekend, I've noticed that MOTD is followed by a separate FA Cup Highlights show, in a 14 minute slot. I know that the MOTD brand is sometimes used for other competitions (eg MOTD Live for the Euros and the World Cup), but is there something contractual which says that the FA Cup has to stand alone, and can't be in the same programme as the Premier League?

No, but the Premier League coverage is only available on iPlayer for seven days, whereas the FA Cup can be made available for 30 days - so doing it this way means the FA Cup coverage is still available after the Premier League coverage has expired. It will be seamless on screen, of course.

you are, of course, quite right - it was one programme billed as two events. It's not quite so seamless on iPlayer, where MOTD finishes mid-sentence and then picks up on the second programme. It also finished with a black and white BBC Sport copyright screen, which I guess was for the funeral.

It's been like that since the BLM protests last year. Think only independent productions have been using the yellow one.

The seemless issue also happens with Morning Live. Either Breakfast gets cut off at 8 minutes past and then it's on the start of Morning Live until that expires or ML starts with the title sequence or even 2 minutes in when it officially starts according to the schedule.

[Brekkie]

Surely just running a trailer for MOTD2 or something could have been used to seamlessly break it up.

[valley]

That rumoured "European super league" plan which came up last year seems to have appeared again, with Sky News thinking that an announcement is due imminently.

https://news.sky.com/story/european-supe...s-12279432

[Brekkie]

It comes up virtually annually, usually as UEFA are discussing their competitions. Hope it never happens but we'll see - would be the biggest slap in the face though for fans and pretty much wipes out the clubs history.

[Rdd]

Widely reported but also widely reported there would be an announcement at 9.30pm, which obviously hasn’t happened.

It comes up every so often, as leverage to give the big clubs more security in terms of Champions League participation (owners from countries used to a closed league system apparently don’t appreciate that a bad season could cost a big club European football). And sure enough UEFA are also set to announce the much touted “Swiss format” Champions League tomorrow. A Super League would be a more dramatic proposal though in that it wouldn’t just replace the Champions League, it would also replace the domestic league for teams involved (because they will be expelled from their domestic leagues if they do it without association backing)

Edit: Official announcement made tonight, 12 clubs from England, Spain, and Italy signed up. Surely the Premier League/La Liga/Lega Serie A will have to expel the clubs involved.

[madmusician]

An interesting error on C4’s F1 highlights programme tonight. The second part of the build-up began with a VT without audio and whilst Steve Jones’ link did have audio, he threw to a VT which was again silent. We then saw a jump back to the start of the part, some rewinding, including a VT clock, and the replaying of the part, this time with all audio present and correct.

Interesting for a few reasons:

This programme will be a live play out from Timeline in Ealing (where Whisper make and edit the programme) will it not? I’d be interested to hear how some of the programme had audio and some not - I’d have presumed that these parts of the build-up would have been edited together and played out as one (i.e. it’s not directed ‘as live’ with a director playing in the VTs manually around the pre-recorded links), so it’s not obvious to me how the VTs were without audio, yet the as-live link from the circuit did have audio.

Secondly, I’m currently watching the programme on All4 (not having watched it live) and it’s thrown the ad-breaks out - as the second part was approx 45 seconds longer than it should have been, all the breaks are now kicking in 45 seconds or so earlier than they should be (and are cued in the programme). I’m assuming that this is only something that’s happened on All4 (with the break times given by the production team already having been coded into that stream), and that the live play out was manned and able to delay the breaks by the correct amount following this overrun? Did anybody watch it and see?

Also worth noting that this is the second play out error from Timeline in as many races, as at the last race there were various bits of picture break-up and audio drop-outs, which I’m sure originated at Timeline rather than anywhere else in the chain.

[dvboy]

IIRC Sky Sports News normally records the 11pm bulletin to repeat through the night, looks like that's not going to be possible tonight and presumably they have a presenter on standby for a few hours.

[Brekkie]

Super League plans confirmed. Clubs plan to continue playing domestically. Superleague will have 15 founding members who play annually and 5 based on qualification, split in two leagues of ten playing home and away in midweek slots. Top 3 in each division plus 2 play off winners go on to quarter finals.

This would deliver 180 league games (min 18 per team) and 17 knock out games (over 7 weeks) if my maths is right correct, compared to the 48 Champions League group games (min 6 per team) an 29 knock out games. Even if the teams were allowed to remain in the league it would almost certainly end their participation in the cup competitions.

https://www.skysports.com/football/live-...ve-updates