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Today David Davies, one-time BBC presenter and former Football Association executive director, presents his proposals to ensure that much-loved events in the British sporting calendar should be on free-to-air TV.
He is expected to recommend axing Sky Sports' rights to the Ashes. Many sports fans will cheer him for this. But this sorry story doesn't cast a good light on any of those involved, principally the Government and BSkyB.
For the row over the so-called crown jewels of sport - the Ashes, the Derby, Wimbledon, the Open and qualifying matches for European and World Cup football - is shot through with hypocrisy, nostalgia, vengeance and naked commercialism.
It is partly a battle between the traditionalists and the upstarts. Gordon Brown is posing as a traditionalist, in favour of the nation sharing its enjoyment of (free) televised sport the way it did back before the arrival of Sky.
The chief upstart is media baron Rupert Murdoch. He is no lover of Britain yet his British newspapers and Sky form a large and profitable part of his empire.
It is impossible to unravel what is going on without taking Mr Murdoch into account. Equally, it is impossible to ignore the Government's political motives in bringing these recommendations to the table with an election impending.
For just as there is no commercial tactic that Mr Murdoch will not employ, so there is no populist cause which Labour will not embrace: witness Mr Brown's professed love of the X Factor.
The idea of returning to the people all their favourite sporting events is clearly irresistible, even if free-to-air won't come into play for some years because of the required legislation.
There is also the strong possibility that some sort of revenge is being exacted on Murdoch for allowing the Sun to back the Conservatives and to embarrass the Prime Minister over his letter to Jacqui Janes.
It's a mystery to me why anybody should imagine that the Sun carries much weight in politics but Brown is furious and vengeful.
Sky argues that the BBC has an unfair advantage, which is the government grant which enables it to distort the free market.
The grant is paid for from the television licence, currently £139 per year. But Sky TV has devised an expensive scheme to attract viewers, using sport as bait.
I pay up, and it costs me £32 per month, nearly three times the licence fee. And Sky is still able to sell advertising, which is why it is so keen to secure subscribers.
So this cheese-paring organisation, with its shabby production values and no public service responsibility, pays vast sums of money to buy sport, hook in viewers, increase advertising revenue and so on, round and round.
What is missing from its agenda is any sense that the viewer, rather than its profit, is the main concern.
When Murdoch's son James, the head of his European operation, makes speeches suggesting that somehow the BBC is destroying the free market, that should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
In order to watch sport on Sky, you are obliged to subscribe to the whole Sky Sports package, so cunningly is the sports coverage spread about the channels.
And special events - that is, any event that Sky can charge extra for - are not included. For all James Murdoch's bluster, Sky is nowhere near the moral high ground.
This game is being played for very high stakes indeed: if Sky is deprived of major sport, the Murdoch media empire will suffer seriously, which is why Sky has been so quick to claim that none of this could come into law before 2016.
I wish I believed that the Government really has the people's interest at heart but like virtually every initiative Brown announces these days, it appears designed to attract votes to avoid the coming deluge.
There are other forces at work. Nostalgia is rife for the days when the family sat around the little flickering television, watching three channels, before all going out to the pub - not the children of course, at home with a spinning top - to discuss Coronation Street or Z Cars or Bobby Charlton's haircut. Society seemed to have more cohesion then.
Now the areas of agreement have shrunk. Nobody back then would have told the Prime Minister that their soldier son was betrayed by lack of equipment.
Nobody would have supported a team such as Arsenal, which routinely fields 11 foreigners. Nobody would have attacked school teachers.
Policemen were able to lead naughty lads by their ears back to their parents without fear of being suspended.
But the genie is out of the bottle: those days are gone, if they truly existed. If Sky is stripped of its exclusive TV rights, people will obviously be able to enjoy more sport for free but we shouldn't imagine that this change will bring back an innocent sporting culture, less corrupted by money and more conducive to lost values.
Strangely, today's help for the crown-jewels enthusiasts has arrived from an unexpected quarter. Not long ago, Mr Brown was an enthusiastic supporter of open markets.
Now there has been a mood change. It has been revealed that markets have no logic, and certainly no ultimate and beneficial purpose.
It follows that enriching one wealthy entrepreneur - Mr Murdoch - and his shareholders is not a high priority for a government that has seen bankers almost beggar the country by their greed and arrogance.
The question the Government should be asking is really a utilitarian one: should the 1.9 million people who watched England's Ashes win this summer via a Sky subscription continue to deny the remaining millions the right to see the national team, just because this arrangement makes money for Sky?
Seven million watched the previous Ashes series we won, when it was free to view. I don't think it will take Mr Brown long to ponder that one.
Reader views (4)
Sport is so over-commercialised nowadays, ALL sport on TV should be pay per view - look how much people spend on big screen plasmas, HD or their teams kit, for example - the difference would be minimal.
The BBC only champion it because of executive`s jollies, and look at how much football season tickets (for real fans) cost these days, considering how much sporting "celebrities" are paid, it`s obscene.
As for cricket, rugby, formula 1 etc, it would be interesting to see an opinion poll as to how many of the population actually give a damn whether it`s televised or not.
And then, of course, there`s the olympics.........
- Darius, London UK, 13/11/2009 12:56
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Is the Governement planning to make up the shortfall in the £Millions Sky pay the ECB for the rights to show the cricket? Does the ECB reallly want to be back on the BBC for little money and second rate coverage?
Surely its against some European Law to have a state sponsored broadcaster having a monopoly on the rights to sporting events?
Would the BBC have ever invsted as much money into cricket or cricket coverage as Sky? Would they have invested in the technolgy that has brought us hawkeye, snickometer and David Lloyds pearls of wisdom?
It aint broke Gordon Brown so stop meddling and concentrate the public purse on protecting every servicemans life in the wars you have created.
- Norbert, Teddington, 13/11/2009 12:56
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I'd like to echo Andy's comments, Sky Sports is sans pareil when it comes to cricket coverage. I'm sure the heaving masses who get excited only once every 4 years don't appreciate it, but true fans love being able to watch overseas tours without breaks for horse-racing etc.
- St, London, 13/11/2009 10:55
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Are you for rea?
Sky, shabby production values??
Sky give the game the comprehensive coverage it deserves both home and away as opposed to the Beeb who will cut away during play to show horse racing and finish their coverage in the evening even before the players have actually made it back to the Pavillion.
Sky's cricket coverage is superb, in-depth and a joy to watch for real connoisseurs of the game as opposed to the plastics who would like to tune in once every four years to watch a few minutes of the Ashes.
- Andy Tongue, Kentish Town, 13/11/2009 09:27
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