How Sky TV Has Changed Football Viewing Forever, 30 Years On

For young fans in the UK, it might be hard to conceive of football without Sky Sports. But those who have been following the beautiful game a little longer will attest to just how much has changed in the last 30 years.

Sky TV launched its first four channels on 5 February 1989, revolutionising TV from the outset with its introduction of a 24-hour news channel; BBC News 24 didn't arrive until eight years later.

But the breakthrough we really care about came on 20 April 1991, when Sky Sports was born. Although perhaps a more important landmark still came the following year, when the broadcaster made an unprecedented £304 million bid to air the first season of the Premier League.

Now, we could argue all day about whether the bundles of cash injected into football by Sky have had a largely positive or negative impact on the game. Some think football has become overly commercialised and distanced from its origins, while others argue the money has helped to build grass roots infrastructures and improve the safety of stadia.

But what can't be argued is just how far football coverage has come along under Sky Sports. It brought us Jeff Stelling, Soccer Am, and perhaps best of all, Chris Kamara standing next to a football pitch and not having a clue what's happening in the game he's covering.

Thanks to Sky, the sheer amount of football coverage has gone through the roof in the last 30 years.

Two years prior to Sky Sports, a combined total of 35.5 live matches were televised on ITV and BBC combined. Yes, you read that correctly - the Beeb only played the second half of an England vs Greece game... Fortunately, viewers got to see Bryan Robson score the winner in the 79th minute.

Fast forward to 2015, and Sky Sports aired 13,000 hours of football. This season alone, Sky Sports will broadcast 126 live Premier League matches.

But beyond simply putting more of the game we love on our screens, Sky has transformed how we watch the game.

The broadcaster spearheaded a shift towards interactivity, primarily through our old friend the red button. For the first time, viewers were able to choose exactly how they watched the game.

Viewers could look through statistics and highlights at their leisure, and were even given the option of watching the game from various impractical angles. Obviously, the angle from which we have always watched football is the best angle, but still, it was nice to be given the choice.

Perhaps the most-loved features accessible through the red button though were Player Cam and Fanzone. The former also wasn't much good in terms of actually watching the match, but if you just fancied watching Robert Pires stroll about a bit then it was excellent. Much like Kammy, you would often completely lose track of what was actually going on the game, instead spending 90 minutes transfixed by Nolberto Solano's every move.

Fanzone was an even more beautiful concept still - put a fan from each team side by side and let them commentate. Inevitably, it often ended up very emotional, and it was actually miraculous that nobody got seriously hurt in one of those extremely partisan commentary boxes.

Indeed, the broadcaster has never lost sight of the fact that football is ultimately about entertainment. Soccer Am has masterfully synthesised football coverage with light-hearted football-based banter since 1995, serving as the perfect distraction on a Saturday morning before all the action kicks off.

It's easy to forget just how many legendary moments the show has produced since its inception almost 25 years ago. Words such as 'tekkers', 'bouncebackability' or 'taaaaaaxi' may never have even entered the language of football without it.

This fun element is carried through to Soccer Saturday, where Jeff Stelling and co have formed a priceless rapport through the years. Arguably, the team's jibes and blunders are as important a part of the show as the actual football coverage.

Indeed, Paul Merson has made a name for himself due to his inexplicable inability to pronounce players' names. You would think this would be a fairly major flaw for a football reporter, but he only endears himself further with every mispronounced midfielder.

But the broadcaster provides balance too. For while they have kept football fun, they must also be credited with helping to take football punditry to a higher level.

Gone are the days when people expected nothing more than a cursory half time comment from a former pro. Nowadays, people have become accustomed to hours of in-depth analysis, usually set before huge interactive screens.

Monday Night Football is a prime example of this, with the likes of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher given the platform to dispense their knowledge and discuss the fine details of the game to a level that was previously unprecedented.

But more importantly than all of this, Sky Sports started recording little videos of players folding their arms for the pre-match team line-up announcements, which has obviously improved everyone's viewing experience immeasurably.

Oh, and there's the small matter of Super Sunday: big football, all day... AND IT'S LIIIIVE!

Roll on thousands more hours of unadulterated football.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: SPORT, TV and Film, News, Football, Sky

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey