A Question of Sky Sports

Last updated : 15 September 2011 By Matt LeCameron

That option is through the magical red button, whereby you could choose to watch any one from seven different matches. I suspect the answer is money related, but I started asking myself why they cannot do the same thing with the premier league coverage.

Sky has the rights to broadcast Premier League matches, but we find that only two or three matches a week are shown, and generally speaking it is the 'big teams' that get the lion's share of screen time.

We also find that the traditional saturday afternoon kick off does not get ANY of the matches aired. Instead we have to watch Jeff Stelling and his mates enjoying the matches on their own monitors. Why can't we watch what they are watching?

My suspicion is that they pay Redknapp and the charismatic Gary Neville to offer their expert opinion. So, they want us to watch the matches that they are concentrating on, rather than what we actually want to watch.

As a Villa fan, we perhaps get to see one in five of our fixtures live on television- if we are lucky. With Sky Sports subscriptions being rather expensive, it begs the question of where that money goes.

If they own the rights to Premier League football, then why not show all of the matches that they possibly can? They could easily offer the same service as the Champions League coverage and allow customers to choose the match they want.

I would wager that subscriptions would increase if customers knew that they could see all of their team's matches.

ESPN has rights for a few games, but not many, so there are still a lot going unaired. A reliable source informed me that ESPN have rights for around 24 matches a season, which leaves a lot of games to Sky. Something needs to be done to look into this- not only for Sky customers but for football fans in general.

In the era of on-demand television that we now live in, it seem ridiculous that I still have to listen to match commentary on the radio. I should be able to see the Villa boys in HD every single week.

If anyone can shed any light on this conundrum, please do so.