The Premier League and, more importantly, Sky Sports or TNT Sports need a version of the brilliant ESPN pre-game show College GameDay to entertain and excite fans for the footballing weekend.
Because not to sound like ‘old man shouts at clouds,’ but the state of football programming in the UK has declined in the past decade. Sky, with Soccer AM and Soccer Saturday (the only time we ever said the word Soccer), and the BBC, with Football Focus and Final Score, all taking a nose dive from the heights they once were.
Regarding the BBC, it felt like you had the older, mature brother, who was more factual and interesting. Sky was the little brother who wanted to have fun with the sport and gave a feel of mates at the pub.
Now it seems we don’t get either. Both try, but the feel has gone. Sky Sports cancelled Soccer AM after its sharp decline. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t be surprising if Football Focus followed and Soccer Saturday has been hit hard even before Jeff Stelling’s departure following the 2022-23 season.
Just look at the viewership across the board in the past 10 years, with adults dropping by 46% and, more worryingly, the key demographic of 16-34 men has plummeted to a shocking 69%.
Compare this to what’s happening across the pond with College GameDay. Last season, they reached a collective viewership of 30 million throughout the whole season, averaging two million per week and have smashed their rivals by 105% in the key 18-49 demographic.
A lot of the decline is due to the rise of football YouTubers and podcasts, both general and club-based. I will admit I’m one of these. As a Tottenham fan, I listen to three very different fan podcasts. Additionally, I love listening to European episodes of The Athletic’s Totally Football Show due to the brilliant analyst and conversation.
Sky Sports have tried to modernise with mixed results. Saturday Social (Soccer AM replacement) is gaining zero interest. In contrast, The Overlap has been somewhat popular with their Stick To Football roundtable episodes more than the live audience fan debate.
So there is a black hole, and I believe football fans want a weekend/pre-game show to get them excited, and this is where the College GameDay format comes into play.
While I’m a Seahawks fan and have been interested in the NFL for several years, College Football is a different beast, but thanks to this show, I get hyped for Saturdays.
It’s to a point now that I’m slightly annoyed if it clashes with Tottenham or Bath Rugby’s afternoon kick-off. The ESPN show (you can also watch it on Sky Sports NFL channel in the UK; I watch on my VPN) runs from 2-5pm, 9am to midday ET/8-11am CT.
The reason why I love the show isn’t down to anything special; it’s well-balanced and entertaining, with interesting discussions. For example, this past weekend (September 28), they were talking about the transfer portal in College Football, and it was fascinating to listen and learn about this new grey area in the sport.
Most importantly, everyone is just fucking good at their jobs, from the production to the panel and reporting. Those three hours fly because of the discussions, brilliant feature stories and segments and because it’s American TV, there’s a shit tonne of ad breaks.
Additionally, it’s a sport that’s growing in popularity worldwide to the point they went international for the first team ever, travelling to Dublin for a pre-season match.
For all these reasons, it’s time to bring a similarly formatted show to bring new life into football programming in the UK. I’d have it called Premier League GameDay, and this is how I’d do it.
Broadcaster
I know you can make a case for BBC or even ITV, but if we’re being honest, this is a coin flip between Sky Sports and TNT Sports.
For how this show would work, the broadcaster is less important because it’d work with both. However, I am going for TNT because Sky does have The Overlap and other programming, and the WBD channel has been taking a beating in recent months.
They’ve lost the NBA from the 2025/26 season (due to their US network losing the rights), didn’t bother re-upping for Ligue 1 (can’t blame them for saving money here), showing fewer Serie A games, WWE will be moving to Netflix at the start of next year, Champions/Challenge Cup rugby is moving to Premier Sports, DAZN picked up the National League rights, and they’re now sharing the Champions League rights with Amazon.
So they need a shot in the arm and with their lunchtime kick-off slot, it would make the ideal placement to have a three-hour live show as build-up.
The beauty of ESPN is that they can use large college campuses that are short distances from the stadium to host. Whereas the locations of outside broadcasts in the UK would have to be either the stadium car park or have to close a road and have the stadium in the background.
Something that had to happen in Dublin, closing some roads as early as Wednesday afternoon to Sunday morning, but if roads did close for OBs, we would handle it better with a shorter window.
Panel/Team
There’s nothing more important than having a great team to make those live in attendance and watching feel like part of the show as you’re hanging with them for a couple of hours talking football before the weekend starts.
The most important role is the host to anchor the ship and knows their shit, something Rece Davis does for College GameDay and Craig Doyle for TNT with their rugby coverage.
There’s a part of me that would make his role at the broadcaster bigger by having the Irishman helm this, but he has a nice work-life balance and is a better-known name now with his appearances on This Morning.
However, I’m going with James Richardson because the man knows his shit and will bring the right amount of personality to helm the ship. Just like he did for the European Football Show for BT Sports before its cancellation in 2017 and for The Athletic for the Totally Football Show podcast.
If he weren’t interested, my backups would be Mark Pougatch and Natalie Sawyer.
Next, I want two brilliantly-minded football journalists to bring genuine analysts. I’m going to The Athletic again to get David Ornstein and James Horncastle. These two men would be able to bring unbiased opinions and give interesting insights, especially in Horncastle’s case when it comes to certain players with his background in Italian and European football.
To sweeten the deal for the three would be to have The Athletic as one of the sponsors and have adverts.
Now we need some former players to join the table. They’re not outside the box, and I don’t think you could get Roy Keane out of his Sky contract; the two names I’ve gone for are Jermain Defoe and Joe Hart.
Even though Hart did do some TV work prior, now fully retired, he’s new to the punditry world and would be able to bring some opposing insight to the game and how it’s changed for keepers.
As for Defoe, I think he would be more analytical with his punditry, having completed his UEFA coaching badges. It would be a new voice for many audiences who haven’t seen him on the Premier League broadcast.
The final spot I’m giving to Ally McCoist.
Again, he’s the lead colour commentator for TNT, but he would bring so much fun to the panel. Being a former manager, he can bring that knowledge alongside his interest in the history of the game.
I originally had Peter Crouch as part of the team, but I can see TNT wanting to keep Crouch for their punditry team for the main football coverage. The other names I would go for were Danny Murphy, who’s done a decent job when it comes to punditry, or I’d be interested in what Aaron Lennon would be like.
Now, let’s move on to the three-strong reporting team.
As lead reporter handling the in-depth interviews and features would be either Jules Breach or Reshmin Chowdhury. While not needed for the live show, they would balance the role with being the pitch side reporter during match coverage and would be the stand-in if Richardson is ill.
She’d be joined by Katie Shanahan to give up-to-date team news for the weekend fixtures as well as the team news for the early kick-off. Finally, Olivia Buzaglo interviews coaches and players as they arrive at the stadium.
The reason for these picks is that I’ve been impressed by Katie’s work with the EFL highlights, and Olivia has been one of the bright spots in the revamped Sky Sports News.
Segments
In addition to interviews and features, there must be a couple more segments.
The top one would be to go into a local University and have their football team demonstrate a coach’s tactics from the previous week to highlight how they won and how this week’s opposition should beat it.
Demonstrations were done on Rugby Tonight or when I used to be a rugby blogger for BT Sport’s Sunday coverage and it was interesting and worked well.
Then, similar to College GameDay, have the panel (unless they’re communicating) pick who they think will win from this week’s match-ups. They’ll be joined by a different celebrity every week. At the end of the season, the winners of the panel and celebrity leaderboard win an amount of money for their selected charity.
This would be something fans would get involved in via an official website for free. They could be a fan leaderboard with the winner receiving the same amount of money at the end of the season.
Sticking with the fans, those attending the live show can register to participate in a game where they’d be taking a penalty against the former England number one Hart. Five people have the chance to take one penalty. If they score they win one or two tickets to sit in the hospitality box with the Premier League GameDay team.
Finally, a discussion on the biggest games happening from the Championship to League Two and Shanahan takes the lead with one of the panellists.
Final Thoughts
This would be a free show to enter, and most importantly, it’ll be family-friendly for the crowds to attend. Those first 250/300 attendees will get a free bacon butty (or veggie option) and a complimentary tea or coffee.
While social media will be important in getting clips out, there’ll be a total ban of fan YouTubers or fan Twitter on the show. They can stick to their thing and be invited to the Overlap fan debate, Saturday Social and Talksport.
Sponsorship and advertising will be necessary so the show itself will be sponsored by a massive brand or company. For some reason, I felt Premier League GameDay powered by Dyson had a nice ring.
As mentioned above, they’ll be advertising from The Athletic, amongst other big brands.
It will need a theme song to get everyone pumped for the show, with College GameDay leaning towards country for their ‘Comin’ to Your City’ opening, which I think is excellent and gets in your head.
For this show, I’d lean towards the nostalgia of FIFA 99, bringing in the prime demographic and use Fatboy Slim’s ‘Rockafeller Skank’ for the minute/90-second opener.
Finally, I want the show to be as exciting and entertaining for both football fans and non-football fans watching as they have breakfast at home or switching on Discovery+ for those fans on their travels to whatever 3pm KO they’re attending.
Additionally, I’d have it on Quest. A station that is a WBD free-to-air channel to build a viewership.
I understand this would be a slow build as ESPN didn’t take their show on the road until 1993 after spending six years in the studio. However, I’d love to see it become so successful that TNT can broadcast from any location in the football pyramid (especially during the FA Cup in non-league towns) and not necessarily be a game shown on the channel, just the biggest match on Saturday.
The Bear Cave 