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Football Programmes

English Football has been screened on television since 1937, and since the early 1990s has become a multi-million pound industry. more...

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History

The BBC started its television service in 1936, although it was nearly a year before the very first televised match of football was screened – a specially-arranged friendly match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury on September 16, 1937. This was followed by the first international match, between England and Scotland on April 9, 1938, and the first televised FA Cup final followed soon after, on April 30 the same year, between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End.

However, coverage of football television did not expand and for the next two decades the only matches screened were FA Cup finals and the odd international. The advent of floodlighting led to the creation of the European Cup, designed as a midweek cup competition for the champions of European nations, in 1955. The newly formed British television station ITV saw televised football as an ideal way of gaining a share of the audience from their only rival broadcaster, the BBC. The BBC meanwhile, started showing brief highlights of FA Cup matches on its Sports Special programme from 1955.

Though European and cup football proved popular, league football continued to be played untelevised, particularly due to clubs' fears that television would reduce matchday attendances. The first televised league football came in 1962, when Anglia Television launched Match of the Week, which showed highlights of matches from around East Anglia. The first match shown was Ipswich Town's 3-2 defeat at the hands of Wolves at Portman Road on September 22, 1962. League football went national in 1964, when the BBC introduced Match of the Day which showed highlights of league matches from around the country, though until 1983 the identity of the teams playing was kept secret until the programme aired, to avoid possibly damaging attendances.

With intercontinental communications satellites in their infancy, no World Cup coverage was shown until the 1966 tournament, which was held in England. The tournament, which England won, increased the popularity of the sport. With more football viewers than ever, Match of the Day thrived, and remaining ITV regions launched their own football programmes, including LWT's The Big Match in 1968, which eventually became the football programme for the entire ITV network.

The demand for football grew and the decision to start screening live league matches was almost inevitable; the very first live league match was between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest in 1983 and was shown on ITV. By the late 1980s the value of live TV coverage had rocketed; while a two-year contract for rights in 1983 had cost just £5.2m, the four-year contract agreed in 1988 cost £44m, a fourfold increase per year. With top flight football proving particularly lucrative, in 1992 the clubs of the Football League First Division voted to quit the league en masse and set up their own league, the FA Premier League.