BBC Scotland would love to make the national men’s football team matches free-to-air, its new director has said. Hayley Valentine said she would “love” for the games to be shown on terrestrial TV and that “there are live discussions going on”. But she warned that “these things are not cheap”.
Tartan Army supporters have long complained about games involving Steve Clarke’s side being shown on a variety of subscription channels, while England matches are routinely shown on ITV or Channel 4. Norwegian broadcaster ViaPlay is contracted to show all of the men’s teams games until 2028, but recently decided to scale back their coverage of Scottish football.
Valentine was responding to a question from West Dunbartonshire MP Douglas McAllister during a Scottish Affairs Committee session in the House of Commons.
She said: “I know how important sport is to Scottish audiences. I’m a big football fan. These moments are huge for us and of course we would love to have the men’s internationals.
“These things are not cheap and we have to think about value for money in all of our decision-making. In order to pay pay for one thing… there’s not extra money, what are we not doing in order to fund something else?
“I don’t really want to go much further than that because, as you can imagine, there are live discussions going on. Of course I’d be delighted if we could bring these [games] to free-to-air audiences.”
She added: “We will cover the Commonwealth Games. There are discussions going on about rights which I can’t go into in this room. But if you look back at what we did the last time, I think that sense of how we cover sport as a whole… it’s not just about the live match. It’s about what we do round the outside and that sense of how we bring a city, the country, together is really important to me.”
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