ABSTRACT
It was a television executive’s dream football match. A bank holiday game to decide the championship between two of football’s oldest rivals. All the ingredients that television requires from live sport were present, with a few extras thrown in for good measure. A stadium seething with 60,000 fans cranked to fever pitch; a referee with blood streaming from an open wound caused by being struck by a coin thrown from the crowd, and a fan deciding that the quickest way to exit the stadium was to fall from the top of one of the highest football stands in Britain. Violence, aggression, drama, passion and an Old Firm football match in the middle of it all, just the sort of qualities BSkyB wanted from Scottish football and had paid over £11 million a season to secure.
