Sky Sports heading for another big letdown as rivals are prioritised over Celtic

Sky Sports are heading for a second season in a row of not taking all of their contracted broadcast allocation of Scottish Premiership matches.

Last season, Sky only showed 41 of the 48 matches they’d paid to broadcast across their multiple channels before refusing to comment on why when approached by other media outlets.

With just six matchdays remaining this term, Sky still have a surprising 13 available broadcasts from their allocation. At this stage, it looks unlikely they’ll use them all.

Journalist Joel Sked of The Scotsman has totalled up all the matches shown live so far this season and also broken it down by individual clubs.

He shows that Rangers have been selected for live coverage on 18 occasions, with just 13 of Celtic’s 32 Premiership matches so far broadcast.

Clearly, it’s even worse for the rest of the league with Ross County remarkably only having one game shown across the entire season. Hearts are the closest to Celtic with seven of their games aired.

Celtic supporters have shown massive backing to the club this season both at home matches and away, travelling across the country to watch Ange Postecoglou’s Bhoys.

The reality is though that away allocations are often sold out and in 2022, many people rely on regular broadcasts to stay in tune with the club.

If Sky were using their entire 48 games and distributing them fairly around the league and Celtic were still missing out it’d be one thing, but they aren’t and frankly, the league deserves better.

When you consider that neither derby in Dundee or Edinburgh this weekend is being shown live, there are some odd decisions being made by producers at the broadcaster.

This needs sorting out for next season, especially if the ability of clubs to stream games to fans goes away as predicted by SPFL chief exec Neil Doncaster.

We’re getting to the stage where it’s easier to legally watch live coverage of Celtic outside Scotland than in it – which is pretty farcical in the modern era.

In other news, Celtic striker Giorgos Giakoumakis expertly rejects media’s stirring narrative of ‘battle’ with teammate.