Sky seems to be the limit in trying to bring cash into SPFL

JUST a couple of weeks ago, naughty old Ron Gordon teased us all again about some grand plan to double the amount of revenue coming into Scottish football and a mysterious bit of business that possesses the ‘wow’ factor.

Hard on the heels of news that the SPFL are now about to wave through a new TV deal with Sky that will, by all accounts, see the game in general receive less per live fixture than under the current contract, it is time to ask a simple question of the Hibs chairman and the others involved in plotting this irresistible pathway to the sunlit uplands: What exactly is the big idea then?

Word has been out on the street for some time now that the review carried out by Deloitte and ordered by Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen, Dundee United and Dundee has come to the general conclusion that the SPFL is doing pretty much all it can to bring in finances.

Right or wrong, that makes for a somewhat depressing verdict when a broadcasting deal currently earning £25million-a-year for 48 games looks like being replaced by one that will eventually be worth £30m per season for 60 matches by season 2028-29. As stated at length this week, this is half of what the Norwegian Eliteserien — hardly the stuff of popcorn and stardust — currently hauls in from TV and considerably less than that enjoyed by leagues in Poland, Sweden and Denmark.

Look, everyone knows there is a recession coming. Guaranteed cash from a blue-chip company must be tempting

However, voting this through would give the impression that the clubs who have been dealing with Deloitte for the best part of a year either don’t have the courage of their convictions or misjudged the temperature of the water.

What Rangers will have to say will be interesting as well. Their managing director Stewart Robertson is already on the record as stating that the terms of the existing Sky deal prove that the SPFL have ‘undersold the product’.

From the outside, this proposed new arrangement with Sky just feels underwhelming. Right now, the plans of Gordon and co to make Scottish football into a cash cow are shaping up to be much the same.