Sean: a Celebration

[LHC]

Do you mean the OOV commentators or the presenter/pundit types ? I don't think any of the superb off-camera MOTD commentators make it onto this list -- from which, as an aside, many of the highest earners in TV are excluded because they're paid via private production companies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0w4xqlwr1ro

I don't have a Sky subscription or pay for any media outlet owned by the Dirty Digger, so have no idea who their pres/pundits or commentators are, but I'd be surprised to find any of the off-camera MOTD regulars wielding their lip mics on Sky Sport, as opposed to the pundits, of course.

Although Sky was one of many media corporations formed and owned by Rupert Murdoch, that ceased in 2018 when Comcast purchased the whole lot, including buying out 20th Century Fox's (Murdoch by another name) minority shareholding. Sky is no longer owned or run by the Dirty Digger or any of his family members.

[Maclintick]

I suspect the TV Football commentators do pretty well simply because everything to do with football ( and F1) on TV seems to have 0 on the end of it .

Do you mean the OOV commentators or the presenter/pundit types ? I don't think any of the superb off-camera MOTD commentators make it onto this list -- from which, as an aside, many of the highest earners in TV are excluded because they're paid via private production companies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0w4xqlwr1ro

The reason Lineker earns so much is that he rates well with the C2DE audiences that the BBC is desperate to hang onto . Sky would pay him much more ; he knows and the BBC knows it. But being the face of BBC Football is better for his other interests like the podcasts than the smaller audiences of Sky.
The presence of Sky also distorts the commentator Market. When they are spending £ 20 million plus for the rights to each Premiership match the coverage costs become almost trivial so the presenter pay goes up. And other channels have to hoick their pay - if not to match it but to at least offer something extra.

I don't have a Sky subscription or pay for any media outlet owned by the Dirty Digger, so have no idea who their pres/pundits or commentators are, but I'd be surprised to find any of the off-camera MOTD regulars wielding their lip mics on Sky Sport, as opposed to the pundits, of course.

[eighthobstruction]

....yes, in fact many of co-hosts football/cricket etc are really excellent - Alistair Bruce Ball, Steve Crossman, Kelly Cates, Eleanor Oldroyd, Aaron Paul, Darren Fletcher, Nedum Onuoha....over the years they are friends i tune in , and they don't let me down

DAVID BUTCHER the Chief Executive of Manchester's Hallé Orchestra ... Salary: £62,497 - £64,944 (per annum)

[Maclintick]

....just looked up Mark Chapman the BBC all rounder sports presenter.... (who in my opinion is a thoroughly witty, funny , knowledgeable +, +, +, man [hail fellow well met]) and he gets £325k for his Radio and TV contribution....he is on Radio 5 Live quite a lot at all odd hours and OB's....His ability to host/navigate/steer round table and zoom type radio is very impressive getting best out of contributers , while asking intelligent searching questions (all without laughing like a ninny), and extracting the michel while being self aware and self depreciating....

IMHO Chappers is all of those things, 8thObst, and if judged by the prodigious number of hours he puts in across R5 and TV, while maintaining the highest professional standards & unfaked bonhomous demeanour, as you say, is well-deserving of his £325k.

[Ein Heldenleben]

It's clear that there is a gaping chasm in Sports TV, both in terms of celebrity-status and remuneration, between the commentators, who as you say thoroughly research before every game, work largely off-camera and are masters of their craft enjoying relative anonymity as far as the general public are concerned, and the household-name summariser/pundits paid vast amounts for parading their contentious opinions. This applies primarily in footie, IMHO.

I suspect the TV Football commentators do pretty well simply because everything to do with football ( and F1) on TV seems to have 0 on the end of it . The reason Lineker earns so much is that he rates well with the C2DE audiences that the BBC is desperate to hang onto . Sky would pay him much more ; he knows and the BBC knows it. But being the face of BBC Football is better for his other interests like the podcasts than the smaller audiences of Sky.
The presence of Sky also distorts the commentator Market. When they are spending £ 20 million plus for the rights to each Premiership match the coverage costs become almost trivial so the presenter pay goes up. And other channels have to hoick their pay - if not to match it but to at least offer something extra.

[eighthobstruction]

....just looked up Mark Chapman the BBC all rounder sports presenter.... (who in my opinion is a thoroughly witty, funny , knowledgeable +, +, +, man [hail fellow well met]) and he gets £325k for his Radio and TV contribution....he is on Radio 5 Live quite a lot at all odd hours and OB's....His ability to host/navigate/steer round table and zoom type radio is very impressive getting best out of contributers , while asking intelligent searching questions (all without laughing like a ninny), and extracting the michel while being self aware and self depreciating....

[Maclintick]

That's because sports commentators are experts who do a lot of background research on the players teams etc before each match. As evidence, here's a copy of the great Bill MacLaren's notes for a single rugby match.

It would be unthinkable for the BBC to hire a newsreader or TV personality to present and commentate on a football or rugby match

It's clear that there is a gaping chasm in Sports TV, both in terms of celebrity-status and remuneration, between the commentators, who as you say thoroughly research before every game, work largely off-camera and are masters of their craft enjoying relative anonymity as far as the general public are concerned, and the household-name summariser/pundits paid vast amounts for parading their contentious opinions. This applies primarily in footie, IMHO.

[Ein Heldenleben]

That's because sports commentators are experts who do a lot of background research on the players teams etc before each match. As evidence, here's a copy of the great Bill MacLaren's notes for a single rugby match.



It would be unthinkable for the BBC to hire a newsreader or TV personality to present and commentate on a football or rugby match

Quite a few ,perhaps the majority of commentators, are sports journalists who have maybe played the game. The Shearer figures (known as summarisers ) are usually ex pros. John Motson was typical starting as a print football reporter for the Sheffield Telegraph the Radio 2 then BBC TV . There are a few newsreaders who were both TV personalities, newsreaders and commentators. The late Harry Gration , who I had the great pleasure of working with, did commentary , sports reporting and sports and news presenting .

[LHC]

I'm not sure that that analysis is totally.
Sports commentators (especially football ones) seem to have a much better knowledge of the teams, players, and tactics than one ever hears in the interval dribble (sic) on R3!

That's because sports commentators are experts who do a lot of background research on the players teams etc before each match. As evidence, here's a copy of the great Bill MacLaren's notes for a single rugby match.



It would be unthinkable for the BBC to hire a newsreader or TV personality to present and commentate on a football or rugby match

[Maclintick]

Point taken, but I was thinking more of their knowledge and history of previous games, players etc.
Rarely during an introduction to a piece do we get that sort of insight into the piece, the soloist, the players, their instruments.
We're seldom now told how many movements (a game of two halves, ha ha) there are.
But sports commentators can rattle off the names of the team players with great panache, it seems to me: an enviable skill in my book (rather like the Speaker of the HoC having to know which 'honourable' member represents which constituency).

I agree with that point. There's rarely enough on-air credit given to the players on the platform, giving it their all for hours on end. I recall a LFO/Abbado relay where in the concluding applause the announcer observed "Now the trumpeter is taking a bow". I thought "C'mon guys, that's Reinhold Friedrich ! Bit of respect, please". I also agree that the generation of footie-commentators post-Mottie deserve appreciation -- Jonathan Pearce, Guy Mowbray inter alia.

[Pulcinella]

I demur, m'lud. Many's the time I've heard excellent interval discussions on R3, featuring such as our own Makropulos, for instance. OTOH, football pundits can be fallible. Alan Hansen -- paid £1.5m per year by the BBC for his appearances on MOTD in the early 2010s -- never lived down his comment that Man U would "never win anything with kids" in a season where their recent signings, Scholes, Beckham, Giggs & Neville contributed to them winning the Premiership.

Point taken, but I was thinking more of their knowledge and history of previous games, players etc.
Rarely during an introduction to a piece do we get that sort of insight into the piece, the soloist, the players, their instruments.
We're seldom now told how many movements (a game of two halves, ha ha) there are.
But sports commentators can rattle off the names of the team players with great panache, it seems to me: an enviable skill in my book (rather like the Speaker of the HoC having to know which 'honourable' member represents which constituency).

[Maclintick]

I'm not sure that that analysis is totally.
Sports commentators (especially football ones) seem to have a much better knowledge of the teams, players, and tactics than one ever hears in the interval dribble (sic) on R3!

I demur, m'lud. Many's the time I've heard excellent interval discussions on R3, featuring such as our own Makropulos, for instance. OTOH, football pundits can be fallible. Alan Hansen -- paid £1.5m per year by the BBC for his appearances on MOTD in the early 2010s -- never lived down his comment that Man U would "never win anything with kids" in a season where their recent signings, Scholes, Beckham, Giggs & Neville contributed to them winning the Premiership.

[Pulcinella]

This is actually far from being a rhetorical question, OG, esp. in the sporting arena where the explicators who prattle on in the gaps between live commentary, summarisers and their ilk, face competition from AI-generated real-time analysis. During Wimbledon, and to an extent in the Euros, the deluge of data on passes or shots completed, positional play, yards covered, unforced errors and so on reduced the commentators to the status of dumb onlookers between games, as viewers were blitzed with statistical tables. Can't be long before a live "statto-bot" becomes a reality.

While we're on pundits or "experts", the Blessed Gary's £1.35m remuneration, disclosed this week, prompted a "Wouldn't It Be Wonderful If...." waking reverie, as I imagined the unimaginable, and that the British reverence for sport vis-a-vis culture, and concomitant financial rewards, were reversed, so that BAL reviewers, who currently perform a public service for little recompense, could be lobbed Lineker-equivalent amounts of boodle.

I'm not sure that that analysis is totally fair.
Sports commentators (especially football ones) seem to have a much better knowledge of the teams, players, and tactics than one ever hears in the interval dribble (sic) on R3!

[Maclintick]

Why do the BBC need any pundits - football or otherwise?

This is actually far from being a rhetorical question, OG, esp. in the sporting arena where the explicators who prattle on in the gaps between live commentary, summarisers and their ilk, face competition from AI-generated real-time analysis. During Wimbledon, and to an extent in the Euros, the deluge of data on passes or shots completed, positional play, yards covered, unforced errors and so on reduced the commentators to the status of dumb onlookers between games, as viewers were blitzed with statistical tables. Can't be long before a live "statto-bot" becomes a reality.

While we're on pundits or "experts", the Blessed Gary's £1.35m remuneration, disclosed this week, prompted a "Wouldn't It Be Wonderful If...." waking reverie, as I imagined the unimaginable, and that the British reverence for sport vis-a-vis culture, and concomitant financial rewards, were reversed, so that BAL reviewers, who currently perform a public service for little recompense, could be lobbed Lineker-equivalent amounts of boodle.

[Old Grumpy]

Why do the BBC need any pundits - football or otherwise?