Gary Lineker’s departure from Match of the Day feels more like a defeat for the BBC and the programme than it does for Mr Football.
In the epoch of streaming and immediate consumption MOTD feels increasingly like a relic of the analogue age, tucked away on a Saturday night when its traditional audience has nodded off and Gen X are on their way out.
I mean, what is the point of a highlights programme six hours after Saturday’s 3 o’clock kick-offs finish when the goals are available online from 5.15pm? The Saturday matches are already the rump of the weekend litter with the big ticket sellers usually allocated a Sunday slot and others moved there to balance the crowded schedule.
The Saturday night slot is wholly unsuited to a modern audience steeped in social media and streaming culture, for whom sitting in front of a television set all night has never been a goer. The format is frayed and tired.
Even Lineker’s nifty banter has to work harder to keep the viewers engaged, and, delivered as it is by a greying 63-year-old many times removed from the fresh-as-paint thirty-something who laid Des Lynam’s moustache to rest in 1999, this separation ultimately follows the traditional pattern. Time waits for no icon.
Programming, like the game itself, has radically changed since Fergie ruled the earth and Manchester United were a thing. The BBC’s new head of sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, reportedly saw Lineker’s departure as an opportunity to make his own mark as well as revamp the show. Except, the problem is not only the format but the medium too.
The big-show TV vibe with its sequinned Saturday night atmosphere and glossy production values is done. Lineker timed his departure like he did his arrival in the box, to the nano-second, to make his exit look more like his decision than his ambitious editor’s.
Though Lineker was understood to have been open to extending his MOTD contract beyond this season, that option was shut down by the former newspaper executive with a sharp knife looking to make the programme relevant to a younger audience and cut the wage bill at an organisation under fiscal pressure.
Lineker is the BBC’s highest earner on £1.3m a year. The contract extension he has negotiated takes him to the end of the 2026 season, a final tour of duty during which he will present the BBC’s coverage of the FA Cup before signing off at the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Sitting on a reported pension pot of £30m, Lineker is hardly bruised by the outcome. Moreover, the Goalhanger podcast business, of which Lineker is a joint-owner, is booming under the collective The Rest Is… banners, reaching 40m downloads a month. The plan is to push deeper into a US market that is 25 times the size of the UK’s podcast world. Indeed 25 per cent of The Rest is History audience is American already.
Freed from the constraints of his BBC post, where he is expected to check his liberal political orientation at the door, the podcast environment allows Lineker to criticise teams, as he did with England at the Euros, as often as he wants, to express his unease at the treatment of human beings as he did in his tweeted criticism of the government’s asylum policy, and play more golf.
Lineker’s playful charm, intelligence and insight has held MOTD together for longer than it might, just about hanging on to relevance. However, the zeitgeist has moved on. Without Lineker, the currency of his sidekicks, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, neither of whom have the wit or sparkle to carry the show, is diminished, begging the question of what Kay-Jelski might do to hang on to market share.
The value of the late-night Saturday TV slot had shrunk to such a degree, the rights to MOTD fell to the BBC by default after ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 elected not to bid in the 2025-2029 pitch. And with Saturday’s match schedules set to shrink further from next season, a Lineker-lite MOTD faces an even greater struggle on a diet of Crystal Palace, Fulham and Brentford.
The moment of Lineker’s parting is the BBC’s Budget moment, so sensitive it required systemic leaking to soften the blow. The issue featured on the BBC’S flagship 10 o’clock news without official comment by the BBC or Lineker.
It was presented as a clash of personalities between two power figures. Lineker walked away with something but lost the post they say he was still happy to lead. The BBC’s head of sport was seen as getting his way, easing a legend into his dotage while saving a pile of money. It’s a huge gamble for Kay-Jelski, who might be right in recognising the need for change but is as powerless as Lineker to hold back the Gen Z forces ultimately deciding MOTD’s fate.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/MZ8gSJB
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