As the Premier League kicks off this weekend the flagship football show celebrates its 60th birthday.
There were spells when ITV took the highlight rights and left MoTD lacking in footie highlights content, but for the most part the Beeb have given viewers Saturday night big match round-ups over the past sixty years.
“With 33 million viewers last season across the Premier League and FA Cup, Match of the Day remains part of the staple diet of football fans who still get a huge buzz from hearing that iconic theme tune on a Saturday night.” – BBC Sport
The show continually evolves for changing viewing habits bringing it’s unique and unmatched analysis and commentary across all platforms.
Whether watching live or increasingly on iPlayer, audiences follow all the action free to air and across BBC Sport’s digital platforms, with more than 150 million MOTD clip views last season across social media and the BBC Sport website, along with spin-off shows such as MOTD Top-10.
Match of the Day at 60 will be celebrated across the BBC including an interactive timeline created by BBC History celebrating the key milestones for the show. A specially curated documentary, MOTD@60, delves into the archive and all the historic moments and looks at how the changes through the years have made MOTD what it is today will be on BBC One on Monday 26 August at 10.30pm and also available on iPlayer.
Next week, The One Show is going behind the scenes to uncover how the production is put together live every Saturday from how the running order is decided to how match edits are made.
Host Gary Lineker is also celebrating his own special anniversary – no not another million quid in the bank on the back of the licence fee – the ex-footballer has been host for 25 years since 1999. In a ratings breakdown posted on social media earlier this year, by Lineker, it showed the peaks of viewing came with the highlights packages and not the studio content leaving many asking why not just pay a regular BBC Sport presenter to host the show and save fee payers a huge amount of cash.
“The series has come in for much critical disdain for how much of a pay packet it dishes out to its lead presenter – when the ratings breakdown shows viewers watch, strangely, for the football footage highlights and not the host; and furthermore Match of the Day 2 has a presenter on probably a fraction of the salary and does the same job, but the Beeb know best as always when it comes to fluttering away the telly tax we all pay.“ – TV Critic Vivian Summers
