When the newly-formed Premier League sold its TV rights to the brash, recently-formed BSkyB in April 1992 for a whopping £304m everything changed and football would never be the same again.
Fearing an Americanisation of our beautiful game, many were aghast that traditional outlets such as the BBC and ITV had missed out, while another considerable concern was the scant number of people who owned satellite dishes, allowing them to watch the games.
This in itself led to a seismic change to the footballing landscape with a dramatic increase in matches being viewed in pubs.
As for football becoming Americanised this quickly came to pass with games scheduled for ‘Super’ Sundays and Monday evenings, but if the timing of kick-offs worried the traditionalists there could be no complaints about the sheer volume.
The previous season, terrestrial channels had shared only a handful of live games between them. In 1992/93, sixty were broadcast with highlights still available in the form of Match of the Day for those reluctant to submit to Rupert Mudoch’s revolution.
From Sky Sports’ perspective meanwhile, they were now in possession of an expensive vehicle that could help propel them into the mainstream and they had absolutely no intention of wasting this golden opportunity.
As one of their advertisements crowed prior to launch, their aim was the ‘change the face of televised sport’ and armed with a sizable budget and emboldened by having exclusive rights and access-all-areas, they now had the ways and means to do precisely that.
Yet, when looking back on this nascent period there is an odd sense of the wild frontier about Sky’s approach, with daft decisions taken amidst some genius examples of foresight.
Of the latter, it may seem like a small detail but putting up a clock and the scoreline in the top corner of their screens was a novel idea during the early days of the Premier League.
Now, if a televised fixture was minus either, droves on Twitter would be questioning what was going on, presumably blaming a technical fault.
Employing Richard Keys to front their endeavours and Andy Gray to offer informed insight as a co-commentator was also a brilliant move, for all that the pair later disgraced themselves.
The latter raised the bar for punditry in this country and quickly normalised football being talked about seriously and in depth.
Sky’s decision to bring in Martin Tyler as their lead commentator meanwhile was shrewd in the extreme, the skilled broadcaster bringing a steady hand to proceedings.
Did anyone in charge however, seriously think it was a wise idea to have the match ball parachuted in, as happened during their first ever Monday evening game between Manchester City and QPR?
Furthermore, in that same fixture, a band played on a hastily constructed stage at half-time to an utterly bemused Maine Road.
There was also the Sky Sports Strikers to consider, and what’s the betting executives now regret their haste in agreeing to having a troupe of cheerleaders perform to a mixture of boos and apathy across the Premier League’s inaugural season.
Add in fireworks, headache-inducing opening credits, and Richard Keys’ blazers, and it was clear that Sky were indeed taking their inspiration from over the pond.
Thankfully, sense prevailed, and their coverage settled down, but perhaps some leeway should be afforded those at the helm back then, forging an entirely new MO in broadcasting sport in the UK.
Because this was an era before VAR, and a great many years ahead of live betting, ahead even of the internet.
There was barely a replica shirt on the terraces and grounds were in urgent need of upgrade. Social mores were very different to today as too were viewing habits. Around this period Mr Blobby got to number one and Changing Rooms was massive.
Amidst of all this, Sky swooped in and gave our national game a major shake-up and who knows, maybe it needed it? It’s certainly not be the same ever since.
