'People wondering who will be next': How Sky Sports exodus is causing unrest after veteran pundits are axed
Three football shows axed, a trio of high-profile pundits gone and now an experienced presenter announcing “with a heavy heart” that his long association with Sky Sports is over.
Scott Minto followed Matt Le Tissier, Phil Thompson and Charlie Nicholas in confirming that he would be leaving the broadcaster ahead of the 2020-21 football season.
The Telegraph can also confirm that Goals on Sunday, The Debate and The Sunday Supplement are all coming off the schedules, adding up to the most dramatic overhaul of Sky’s football coverage since Richard Keys and Andy Gray left almost a decade ago.
The ugly prelude to the departures of Keys and Gray was of course whether sexist “banter” could have any place in the workplace. The fates of Le Tissier, Thompson and Nicholas seemed to rest more on whether a certain blend of inoffensive middle-aged football banter and past playing experience still has sufficient appeal across six hours of a Saturday afternoon.
Whatever your view on that particular question, the impact this week at Sky is clear. “People are wondering who or what will change next,” said one insider, who described shock, sadness and yet somehow not surprise at the loss of three pundits with a combined 60 years in the studio.
“There had been rumours of change last summer and I think it had become pretty obvious how people felt. You could feel the winds of change,” said the source.
Jeff Stelling, who has anchored Soccer Saturday since 1994, said that “the best” team had been disbanded. One source questioned whether the show would survive a new generation of producers in its current guise, but another stressed that Stelling, with his encyclopedic knowledge and charisma, was well equipped to adapt.
While social media and even betting companies have been awash with predictions that Alex Scott and Micah Richards will move into the now vacant Soccer Saturday chairs, Sky’s plan is understood to be rather different. Although Scott and Richards have both impressed, they are seen much more as part of the on-site punditry teams at big live games.
Soccer Saturday is instead likely to use a pool of pundits in rotation rather than return to a settled line-up. Paul Merson and Clinton Morrison will stay on the team, but Sky will also use other guests who have appeared on a Saturday or in their midweek Soccer Special shows, alongside new faces.
Le Tissier revealed earlier this month that some people had called for him to be sacked over his views on the Covid-19 crisis. There have also been suggestions that they have made changes to reduce the age and increase the diversity of their pundits.
The internal word is that there is simply an evolution of programming and personnel as Sky seek to optimise their relevance to a changing audience.
It follows the departures last summer of David Gower and Ian Botham from the cricket team, as well as senior presenters over recent years such as Nick Collins and Tim Abrahams.
Considerable change has also taken place away from the camera, with executive editor Andy Cairns leaving last summer after 30 years at Sky and Barney Francis, the former managing director, departing in January after almost 25 years. Rob Webster became managing director last year and, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, innovations have centred around technology that directly connects fans during matches, longer-form documentaries and programmes which look back over memorable moments through the eyes of key protagonists.
Marrying the right content with a quiet revolution in its delivery is the overriding challenge and that means catering for the traditional audience with a television screen in their lounge corner while capturing a generation who largely consume their media through mobile devices. The competition there is not so much BBC, ITV or even BT Sport, but Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix and TikTok.
Sky has stressed that changes to programming are not fixed - the return of Goals on Sunday, The Sunday Supplement or The Debate is not discounted - but that live events are the absolute priority. And, with extra Premier League games during the pandemic on top of the Scottish Premiership and English Football League, as well as condensed calendars in other sports, that is where programming space and staff will focus.
In its statements, Sky said that Minto, Le Tissier, Thompson and Nicholas had left as part of changes to their football coverage and stressed that they departed with their best wishes and “sincere” gratitude and appreciation.
