Sky-high prices are the ugly face of the beautiful game

“Five point what? BILLION! Did I hear that right? To broadcast games of football? Are they having a laugh?”

There hasn’t been a week recently where I haven’t had to make a dash to the kitchen for some paper towel to mop up the remains of coffee I’ve spluttered out while watching the news.

And this week there was one item so astonishing, so utterly outrageous that not only was I forced to change my whole outfit, I was in danger of smashing my chin as my jaw dropped to the floor.

No, it wasn’t PM Cameron’s attempt to induce a collective heart attack from the nation’s employers by becoming all lefty and suggesting they forget austerity and treat staff to a pay rise.

Nor was it Red Ed Jellybam’s equally ridiculous proposal that if elected Labour will double a father’s paternity leave. A suggestion that could only come from someone who has never had to pay a day’s wage in his life, or in his case, even work for one.

Neither was the not entirely unexpected news that a bank, this time HSBC, were on the hey diddle fiddle and guilty of protecting tax dodgers on an industrial scale.

No the guilty item, delivered initially in a moving scroll across the bottom of my telly, was the staggering news that broadcasters Sky Sports and BT had signed a deal to pay the English Premier League a humungous £5.136 billion for showing football matches.

Five point what? BILLION! Did I hear that right? To broadcast games of football? Are they having a laugh?

The three-year deal, starting in 2016 for 168 live games, works out at over £10million per match. It means that a team which ends up relegated, having never won a match let alone scored a goal, could end up being worth more than the collective wealth of every single team in the Scottish Premier league and Championship.

And this incredible sum equates to almost 75p for every man, woman and child on the planet. It could buy at least 50 new hospitals, 300 new schools or remove the need for food banks by feeding the desperate and desolate.

Instead, it is going to football clubs already bursting with cash and overpaid and overhyped players who are already creaming wages that could make you weep.

And who is it that will actually stump up for this appalling financial aberration?

Well, you, me or anyone that pays for SKY or British Telecom.

Yes, advertisers will be charged through the nose for the privilege of advertising and pubs and clubs will again be hit hard to screen matches, but ultimately it will be the ordinary fan who will pay to view, because without them there is no value and no games.

It’s a disgrace! And it doesn’t matter where you live or watch games you are still charged for the package irrespective of geography or national league choice.

Austerity? Cuts? Forget it.

Where football is concerned, the only cuts are in the size of the cake they have to divvy up and in Scotland that cake has become so small Mr Kipling would reject it.

Don’t get me wrong I totally love the game, but when it gets to the stage where the normal Joe can’t go to a game and is forced to watch it at home because of the sky-high prices levelled for a season ticket.

When the sums of money being drip-fed from the well-fed roast for grass roots football is continually decreased, then questions have to be asked of those charged with running and now blatantly profiteering from this once beautiful game.