I have been posting on this site only recently and not very often. I have been a Town fan for 40 years ever since my dad took to me to a derby game at Carrow Road. His plan was to turn me from a Liverpool glory hunter into a Budgie in the family tradition. His plan clearly failed and I haven’t heard the end of it since.

As I now live in Chester I don’t get to many games these days but my son and I managed three away games last term, including the Crewe cup tie. We hope to make the Blackpool away in September. It narks my old man that I managed to get my lad to follow my team but he failed with me. It's all in good humour though.

This week, however I have been side tracked by the other great love of my life. No not the missus. Motor sport and in particular F1. I know what your thinking, 'Oh no not another moaning F1 fan who is too tight to pay for Sky Sports'.

Well, see there you’re wrong, sort of. I have listened carefully this week to a lot of very balanced arguments and I think the debate over this issue will run and run. I am now helping to run two of the many Facebook pages that have sprung up since the announcement was made eight days ago (Save F1 and March Against F1 on Sky).

We also have a website called SaveF1.co.uk The reason I am putting this blog on footy website is to get your opinion as to how Sky has affected football over the years since they have had the TV rights. My own opinion will become clear further on.

Bear with me while I prattle on about F1 for a bit. My initial reaction to the news about F1 was something along the lines of "Oh no we have to put a stop to this", hence the name of my Facebook page.

As the days have gone on, though, I have somewhat changed my opinion. Having spent almost 30 years in sales and marketing I know a little bit about media campaigns. Also having been involved in motor sport since just after I could walk, I have some experience there as well.

The depth of feeling shown by tens of thousands of UK motor sport fans is something that all interested parties should take as a positive. It shows how much they care. I do, though, feel that the timing of this announcement on the part of FOM (Bernie Ecclestone), BBC and BSkyB is very deliberate: just before the summer break, and at a time when MPs are on holiday (lucky Bs) and programmes like Question Time are off the air.

They knew there was going to be a huge public outcry and connived to reduce the impact with the timing of the announcement. Only one team, Virgin have come out against the TV rights deal so far. Whether or not this deal will be good or bad for F1 remains to be seen.

There are fans and commentators who say Sky has been good for football. I am not sure that I agree. Sky has been good for your team if you are a glory hunter and support one of the top four or five teams. All the rest get left with the scraps and even teams like Liverpool have had there problems recently.

As you move further down the EPL and into the Championship and the Football League, look at other great teams of the past who have been affected by what I would describe as the turmoil caused by the injection of so much Sky money into the game: Ipswich and Portsmouth. Both Sheffield teams. I do not think any of the 100s of smaller semi-pro clubs in UK football have benefited from the Sky phenomenon at all. And it certainly hasn't help England to win a major championship.

Players' wages have become completely out of proportion to club turnover, forcing many into administration across the game, even in the top flight.

Some clubs have folded completely. Chester City FC for example. Gone for good (although recently resurrected by the fans as Chester FC and now in the Superglue League or something). Wrexham FC are heading the same direction and have just had to sell their ground to the next door university in order to stay afloat. Or am I blaming too much on Sky? Am I missing something? When Sky acquired the rights for football, we didn't have the social media we have now and there would have been no chance for football supporter to gang together and voice an opinion. Football is also much more tribal than motor racing. You would never get footy fans supporting more than one equally competitive team.

So I guess what I'm asking, after all that waffle is does football have a lesson to teach F1 or are they just too different? And do you even care? I do not want to lose teams like Lotus or Virgin or even Williams. I don't want the top F1 teams to become unassailable because that would take all the fun out of it. I don't want to see the lower levels of racing start to die out as seems to be happening in football.

I guess that is why I shall continue to campaign against BSkyB being even more dominant in British sport broadcasting. If anyone on this site would like to help us in our fight the Sky empire or just wants to be nosy come and see what we are up to we are on Facebook and on our website at www.savef1.co.uk. Cheers guys.

itfcsmithlarr added 02:26 - Aug 8 Thank you for posting this, someone finally shares my view. I'm one of few people that I know that get annoyed constantly with the lack of coverage of my side, mainly because I'm one Ipswich fan in 100 top 4 glory hunters. If BBC played Championship, League 1 and League 2 on a regular basis like Sky then I wouldn't be so bothered, but the money involved in it is so much more important these days, much more important then entertaining the fans.

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commuterblue added 13:15 - Aug 8 interesting article. I too am sad that I won't be able to watch all the F1 live. However in answer to your question I think you are blaming sky for too much. Ipswich's problems were as much to do with the fall on On digital, some poor player acquisitions, relegation and (in hindsight) over-ambitious stadium plans. And it's not the first time Ipswich have got themself into financial problems following stadium expansion (Pioneer stand and Bobby Ferguson's time). I'm also not sure that Chester would have still been around if Sky hadn't been there. Or the problems of others (I remember going to Notts County vs Luton game when Notts County were against the wall). Third and fourth tier footbal has always been a shoestring affair - I think it just looks even more so now, because of the numbers involved at the top. Also F1 teams are a lot more fluid than football clubs. Indiviudal teams and engine manufacturers come and go a lot more so if some of the smaller teams go - so it's not as important if one team stop racing (where were Lotus and Virgin five years ago - where are Minardi now?) or another one starts. I think it matters less what happens in UK for F1 than for football. Compared to domestic TV income, foreign TV income is 70% again for the Premiership. I don't know the figure for F1 but I would be amazed if UK TV income for FOM is bigger than global TV income, given interest in Europe and elsewhere. So even if Sky is a "bad" thing for a sport, it will be less of an issue for F1 because the influence of Sky is less. So I too am sad about the introduction of Sky. But more because it's one of the few sports I'm actually interested that has been consistently available, live, on free to view. And now it isn't.

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Doctor_Albran added 13:36 - Aug 8 trueblue62, a very good blog about a seemingly emotive subject. For my part, I'm a sports fan - I will watch anything, even kabadi when I was younger and it was on Channel 4 (very entertaining cross between stick in the mud and British Bulldog!) - who has seen the furore over the sky deal as being a little bit of an overreaction, a point of view which I will explain further, but first to your comments about sky generally. As somebody who remembers the football coverage of the late 80's and early 90's the sky deal was a breath of fresh air, more coverage, more information (at a time when the internet was not as widely available as it is now and any ipad would have come with a pencil!), so for sports fans this was fantastic. The negative side has taken longer to develop and many are not (totally) Sky's fault. Sky did inject some cash into football, however, it wasn't until the formation of the Premier League as an entity (i.e. controlling the top tier of football) and their creating regular bidding wars for their televisual rights that the money coming into football has gone up and up and up. Players wages are obscene, however, this can be traced back pre-sky deal to Jimmy Hill's stand on players wages, the growth of the agent within football and the money that the premier league have extracted from their suppliers - they even left sky for a bit to earn more money from ESPN, however, this has subsequently back fired. The demise of clubs has not been as a result of sky but more management practices. Football has become a business within the last 15 years with the flotation of Aston Villa, Man Utd among others in the booming days of the late 90's, yet they are still working as if they are a used car dealership. Portsmouth should have gone to the wall and it was not Sky's fault but Portsmouth's own fault and I actually feel that football would have been better for their having been wound up - football is still not taking action against overspending. But back to your issue - Sky's deal with F1 is very different to that of Football. Sky came in and reinvigorated a sport which had become blighted by violence both on the terraces and in the surrounding areas - this still goes on but is contained. Their coverage did (initially) move the sport back to being a good place to take your kids and enjoy some good sporting entertainment. F1 in contrast is already awash with cash and controlled by an owner whose only interest in the sport is to extract maximum cash from any TV deal (like the PL now) and to promote their brand globally. So they have gone to the best global supplier. The best your campaign could achieve is to get the British Grand prix added to the protected list of free to air sporting events - we have no rights to enforce other countries to supply programming free to air. However, I feel that could be counter productive as Bernie E will use his clout to get this removed by threatening to bin the race and give it to another country (similar to Silverstone vs Donnington a few years back). Finally and this is the key point - in order to keep F1 on BBC, the BBC have to argue that tax payers money (that's all tax payers, not just petrol heads) is best spent on a sport which is watched by the few, whilst areas such as the world service, Radio 4 and BBC News are having to cut services and people are being made redundant which are utilised by considerably more people. F1 will be the same which ever channel it's shown on (although the BBC coverage has been very good and I'm actually excited by F1 again for the first time in a decade - but this is the racing not the coverage) and your argument about the creation of a top tier in F1 being one of your fears what are Red Bull, Maclaren and Ferrari?

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