Action Replay – August 10, 1985

By Chris Lepkowski

August 10, 1985: Everton goalkeeper Neville Southall rolls the ball to left-back Pat Van Den Hauwe; referee Joe Worrall blows for full-time.

And that’s that.

It was the final moment of action between the League champions and the FA Cup winners in the Charity Shield. Everton had beaten Manchester United 2-0. The defending title winners secured the victory thanks to Trevor Steven and substitute Adrian Heath. New boy Gary Lineker would have to wait for his first Everton goal. Ron Atkinson, manager of United, would be reflecting on a less than convincing performance by goalkeeper Gary Bailey. Would he stick with the beleaguered floppy-haired custodian, or go with recent signing Chris Turner? Choose wisely Ron…

Of greater importance, the Charity Shield, played out in front of 82,000 fans, would be the final English football game to be televised in 1985. The following week, on the opening day of the Football League season, the nine-year-old me was at a family party in Leamington Spa and turned straight to the TV guide in my uncle’s lounge to see when the football would be on.

Nothing.

The TV cameras would not be returning to a Football League stadium – for English audiences at least – until January 1986.

This is the story of a TV blackout: when football was in such a place that none of the broadcasters could agree a package to screen live games or highlights. The Big Match was given the red card; there would be no Match of the Day.

How did we get to this point? This is a tale that begins with some context about where football was during the 1980s.

*****

There was a time, during the early-to-mid 1980s, that the two main British broadcasters, BBC and ITV, were anything but rivals when it came to football rights. The respective heads of sport from each channel would meet up for an extended liquid lunch at a swanky West End hotel, and chuckle to themselves like Statler and Waldorf as they dreamt up new ways to claim football for as little money as they could. As the vino flowed, the duo would carve up a financial package that would suit them much more than the actual clubs. It wasn’t so much an opening salvo, more of a fait accompli.

In 1983 the broadcast giants made a joint bid worth £5.2m, allowing them to alternate live coverage either on a Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon. But there was a third player in the running for those rights. This was unheard of. Crucially – and we didn’t know it then - it would impact on football beyond anyone’s comprehension.

The company were called Tele-Jector Video Communications Limited, and they were willing to offer £8m for the rights to broadcast coverage of games to 5,000 newly installed screens in pubs, clubs, hospitals, schools and colleges, essentially any centre of community value. Imagine that: watching football down the pub with your mates - surely, that would never catch on?

This appealed to the clubs on several fronts: firstly, the money was huge; secondly, there would be no issues around shirt sponsorship (still a problem for ITV and BBC, who were only about to permit branded shirts). And, of course, it would reduce the TV audience – or at least make it tricker to watch games – which clubs felt would benefit actual attendances in stadiums.

The Football League had their heads turned by the Tele-Jector offer, only for the company to withdraw from the negotiations late on, leading to a situation where BBC and ITV were able to pick up the rights for their proposed lower figure. Both Jonathan Martin, BBC’s head of sport, and his ITV counterpart John Bromley danced away into the night with yet another successful deal.

By summer 1984, discussions turned to the 1985/86 season. The Football League were beginning to play hardball and already picking up revenue from elsewhere. Live matches were being syndicated to Scandinavia and Ireland, while Brian Moore-fronted highlights were being picked up in Australia, with other countries dipping into a world feed. The global market was starting to switch on, while the domestic scene was very much still behind the apex. ITV and BBC were still working together to call the shots – knowing that without the Football League falling to their demands, there would be no televised football. It was at that point the Football League rejected the joint multi-season deal worth £17m. Even though these discussions came before football’s nadir of May 1985, it was clear there was a growing revulsion with football’s image problem.

An admission that you were a football supporter in those days would end any conversations or have been met with an awkward silence or grimace. Football was, according to The Sunday Times, “a slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people.” Why would anyone want to watch it on TV?

Nevertheless, a new wave of football executives were pushing back against the narrative, led by David Dein of Arsenal and Tottenham’s chairman Irving Scholar. The Spurs owner had tried to modernise White Hart Lane, introducing credit card payments and creating executive facilities where business people could entertain like-minded folks from the safety of a corporate box. He believed there was a value in attracting new clientele; supporters with disposable income, who were more likely to attack a selection of fine wines, rather than rival fans.

Dein, meanwhile, had spent time in the US and was bewitched by the way American sports marketed their products. He would campaign for 15 minute half-time intervals, to enable fans to spend more time on the concourse. His focus was around making football an event, rather than just a Saturday afternoon routine. Both men could see the value of football, but were fighting the perception shaped by disaster, hooliganism and the general malaise that football found itself in. Dein would end up transforming Arsenal throughout the late 1980s, right through to the mid-2000s.

Media mogul Robert Maxwell also believed football was worth more than the TV companies were willing to offer. He was the owner of soon to be promoted Oxford United, and felt football was worth £10m a season – at a time when the offer on the table, in February 1985, was just £3.8m per season (rising incrementally) over a four year period. At a meeting at the Western Hotel in Paddington, Maxwell called the TV offer “mad, bad and sad,” pointing out that the only way to raise the value would be to remove the ITV/ BBC cartel.

And so, between that Charity Shield in 1985, and the 1986 FA Cup third round clash between West Ham and Charlton, there was no English football on TV, other than a handful of international friendlies and World Cup qualifiers.

Amid the darkness of football’s TV blackout, light finally emerged. Some 15 months and 30 meetings after the first discussions took place, football came to an uneasy truce with the broadcasters. The Football League finally capitulated in late December 1985, accepting a pitiful £1.3m for nine First Division and League Cup games. A separate FA Cup deal was also signed for four games.

On the pitch, Manchester United would go on to win their opening 10 games of the 1985/86 season, while Everton struggled to adjust to life with new striker Lineker - the Liverpool Echo was inundated with anguished Toffees fans questioning Kendall’s decision to sell Andy Gray. Some 40 goals later, Lineker would end up at Barcelona, via winning the golden boot in Mexico 86. The domestic campaign would end with Liverpool claiming their first-ever League and FA Cup double, with their Merseyside neighbours finishing as runners-up in both. United faltered to fourth, thanks mainly to major injuries to key players, including Gordon Strachan, Remi Moses, John Gidman and, notably, Bryan Robson. It was to be as good as it got for Atkinson, who amid growing claims of a dressing room drinking culture and a charge sheet of poor signings, would be ousted by November 1986.

Yet, the blackout of 1985 would transform football. The Tele-Jector proposal of 1983 made clubs wake up to their true value. Never again, certainly after 1986, would they be bullied by BBC-ITV cartel. Irving Scholar also commissioned Alex Fynn, an executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, to produce a report about the value of football’s relationship with TV. Fynn concluded the rights were worth between £6-8m a year, based on the value of ITV advertising potential – that was a lot higher than £3.6m-£3.8m the broadcasters were willing to offer. For once, Robert Maxwell might have been right about something.

By 1985, some of England’s biggest clubs had started discussions about a potential breakaway Super League. And any media organisations or broadcasters involved would be required to pay big money for the privilege of owning rights to that product. A model was being created that would define football in England.

We didn’t know it during those bleak days of Autumn 1985, but football’s direction of travel was already being shaped.

For more on the blackout, you can listen to our podcast on the subject:

Also in the news (August 10, 1985):

The Sinclair C5 ceases production after just seven months and fewer than 17,000 sales.

Michael Jackson buys ATV Music for $47 million. ATV Music’s portfolio includes every Beatles song.

At the cinema

UK number 1 movie: Return to Oz

US number 1 movie: Back to the Future

And in the charts

UK number 1: Madonna ‘Into the Groove’

US number 1: Tears for Fears ‘Shout’