The Arsenal Women Arsecast Episode 33: Sky's the limit
Arseblog Arsecast, The Arsenal Podcast
arseblog.com
4.8 • 6.9K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2021
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of the Arsenal Women Arsecast, Tim and Alex speak to some senior figures at Sky Sports about the groundbreaking rights deal that saw the channel buy the broadcast rights for the Women's Super League for three years starting from 2021-22. Tim speaks to Director of Football at Sky Sports Gary Hughes and they talk about when and why Sky got involved in the bidding process, what goes into a rights bidding process and giving the WSL the "Sky treatment."
Then Alex is joined by Sky Sports producer Nia WynThomas and presenter Caroline Barker to talk about the content side of Sky's coverage – the tactical analysis, how players might deal with increased scrutiny and criticism and the look and feel of Sky's coverage. With thanks to Alexandra Horton at Sky for helping to put this episode together.
You can follow Tim on Twitter @Stillberto : Alex @AlexIbaceta23
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Arsenal Women Ask cast on AskBlog.com. |
| 0:18.4 | And this episode, well I'm excited about all of the episodes but I'm really excited about |
| 0:22.5 | this one. |
| 0:23.5 | I had a women's football this weekend in the WSL which I'll talk a little bit more about |
| 0:28.3 | what that is in a minute. |
| 0:30.3 | We've managed to arrange to speak to some big important people from Sky Sports for a special |
| 0:36.9 | podcast ahead of this weekend. |
| 0:39.0 | Now those of you probably, even those of you outside the UK will be aware of this. |
| 0:43.7 | Those of you inside the UK will certainly be aware that Sky Sports overtook the broadcast |
| 0:50.3 | right still for the women's super league this season. |
| 0:53.6 | So BT Sport had had it for, I think about 10 years prior to this in partnership with the |
| 0:59.4 | BBC. |
| 1:00.4 | Sky maintaining that partnership with the BBC because the FAA obviously wants a certain amount |
| 1:05.6 | of free to air coverage for the WSL just to continue to raise its profile but Sky Sports |
| 1:12.1 | have come on board as the kind of main rights holder in the UK. |
| 1:15.5 | And that's a really interesting deal for a number of reasons but not least because for |
| 1:20.6 | the first time it actually means that the WSL rights were worth something financially. |
| 1:27.1 | What had happened previously was that they were kind of given away for free and the broad |
| 1:33.1 | casters used to cover the costs themselves of covering. |
| 1:36.7 | This time Sky Sports have actually put money on the table not just in terms of bidding |
| 1:41.0 | for the rights but in terms of the kind of the overall production values and everything |
| 1:46.6 | they've invested behind the scenes. |
... |
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