National and International
A fascinating start to the Euro 2008 qualifiers: England and Scotland with maximum points, and a great comeback by Northern Ireland against Spain after a bad start against Iceland.
I know a lot of people are interested in audience figures, so here are the key ones for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ network coverage. The biggest audience in recent days was a peak of 9.1m for England v Andorra live from Old Trafford. Then we had 3.9m watching the climax of Brazil v Argentina on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One; and 3.4m watched Wednesday's Match Of The Day with highlights of Macedonia v England and Northern Ireland v Spain. (The peak for Sky's live coverage from Macedonia was 2.6m.) Wales v Brazil rated at 1.1m on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three; and Germany v Ireland reached a high of 673,000 also on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three...
But there were a lot of complaints on the same lines about last night's Match Of The Day - with people asking us why highlights of Lithuania v Scotland weren't included. The answer, as to many things, is it's a rights issue: we didn't have access to the pictures from Lithuania. This isn't in any sense anti-Scottish bias: it's just that contracts in this multichannel world are inevitably uneven. So the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ have England home football games and Northern Ireland home games, while Sky have Scotland and Wales at home. The position's reversed in this autumn's rugby internationals with Scotland and the other Celtic nations on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, while England's autumn internationals are (with one important exception) on Sky. For the Six Nations, all the coverage is on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.
In retrospect, we should probably have been clearer about what was going on last night; and for the rest of the Euro 2008 qualifiers and beyond we'll be try to give more information about what you can watch and where. We'll also be making sure that ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport in London works with colleagues across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to deliver the best possible service to our audiences - in football as in all other sports.
