The jury remains out on Uefa’s new Champions League format, according to TNT Sports, with the UK rights holder reserving judgment on whether an expanded league system has “landed as people hoped”.
With a vastly expanded fixture list and an eight-match league stage, the Champions League has been criticised for its complexity and lack of jeopardy. Anticipation is building, however, for the final round of 18 matches set to be played simultaneously on Wednesday.
With the prospects of big names such as Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain in the balance, Scott Young, the senior vice-president of sport at TNT’s owner, Warner Bros Discovery, said match-day eight was a “strong change” from the previous format. But the broadcaster wants to keep an eye on the product into which it has invested a reported £917m over the next three years.
“I think it’s a bit too early for us to judge the success of the new league,” Young said. “And the football fans are still probably a bit like us, waiting to see whether this change has landed the way everybody has hoped.
“We’ve taken the view that we would rather assess this new format of the Champions League after the first year than try and judge it mid-season. [But] the additional clubs, the additional jeopardy that we’re now seeing in match-day eight, and what could play out, I think is an added value.
“At this point in the Champions League previously, it was a foregone conclusion for some teams. [In the new format] you need to be a strong mathematician as well as a football fan to know how it’s going to play out.”
The broadcaster plans to place Ally McCoist in charge of deciphering the permutations of an evolving league table as all 36 teams play at once. McCoist is a popular co-commentator on TNT’s coverage, but the former Rangers striker is to move to the studio for match-day eight when TNT will broadcast all 18 matches live.
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“We’ve moved Ally to the Goals Show,” Young said. “We know we’re going to need to be able to tell the story of not just the results but … the permutations in the table and the jeopardy of how the match day is playing out. Ally is the best person for delivering that.”
Source: theguardian.com
