Euro 2008: So who will you be watching?
A few days ago, a 91Èȱ¬ colleague from outside Sport gave me his view on . "As of now," he said, "I don't really care about the Euros. But I know that when it comes to June, if I'm asked to do a late meeting in the office - I won't! I'll be off to watch the football."
He is, I suspect, pretty typical. Without any of the home nations taking part, we won't have the pre-tournament talking points: , the travel plans of the WAGs. But just before Christmas we sat down with to agree which broadcaster would show which games - and, as we looked at the schedule, I was increasingly confident that this is going to be once it's underway.
The fixtures meeting with ITV is a key part of our planning for big events. My first experience of it was for the - and it took literally months to reach agreement. It is, of course, tricky when just one home nation's involved because there were only three guaranteed games involving England. Three divided by two doesn't work, so the obvious thing to do is allocate two group games to one broadcaster - while the other gets one match with the promise of exclusive rights to the first knock-out game.
What bedevilled the 2006 negotiations was that both the 91Èȱ¬ and ITV wanted as the final group game, and the deadlock was only broken when we agreed to take as our single nailed-down home team game - but with a guarantee of first choice both in the last 16 and the quarter-finals. So we gambled on England getting through twice, and that paid off in the form of the and games. But there were nervous moments along the way as we watched and then the exciting Sweden game on our rivals' screens - with Radio 5 Live commentary, of course...
The Euro 2008 carve-up was much simpler. I was there with Niall Sloane, our head of football; and we sorted everything out in the space of one December afternoon with Mark Sharman and Jonathan Rogers from ITV. One of the things we aimed to do was avoid the pattern in Germany 2006 when on quite a number of days one broadcaster had all the games while the other had none; and you'll see that most of the time there's one game per day for ITV and one for the 91Èȱ¬. The exception is the first Sunday when we agreed to take both games because ITV have the Canadian Grand Prix; and in return ITV get both games the following Saturday.
You won't be surprised to know that most of the first picks were in Group C - the one featuring France, Italy and Holland - but it's hard to find a truly unappealing game in there because the less glamorous groups are potentially the most closely-contested. So here's the full picture of which channel will have what - with the 91Èȱ¬ games also available in HD and on this website.
Sat 7 Jun
91Èȱ¬ Switzerland v Czech Republic 5pm
ITV Portugal v Turkey 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Sun 8 Jun
91Èȱ¬ Austria v Croatia 5pm
91Èȱ¬ Germany v Poland 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Mon 9 Jun
91Èȱ¬ Romania v France 5pm
ITV Holland v Italy 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Tue 10 Jun
91Èȱ¬ Spain v Russia 5pm
ITV Greece v Sweden 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Wed 11 Jun
ITV Czech Republic v Portugal 5pm
91Èȱ¬ Switzerland v Turkey 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Thu 12 Jun
ITV Croatia v Germany 5pm
91Èȱ¬ Austria v Poland 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Fri 13 Jun
ITV Italy v Romania 5pm
91Èȱ¬ France v Holland 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Sat 14 Jun
ITV Sweden v Spain 5pm
ITV Greece v Russia 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Sun 15 Jun
ITV Switzerland v Portugal/Turkey v Czech Republic 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Mon 16 Jun
91Èȱ¬ Austria v Germany/Poland v Croatia 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Tue 17 Jun
91Èȱ¬ France v Italy/Holland v Romania 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Wed 18 Jun
ITV Greece v Spain/Russia v Sweden 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Thu 19 Jun
ITV Quarter-final TBA 7.45pm
Late night highlights 91Èȱ¬
Fri 20 Jun
91Èȱ¬ Quarter-final TBA 7.45pm
Late night highlights ITV
Sat 21 Jun/Sun 22 Jun
Quarter-finals TBA (91Èȱ¬ first choice)
Wed 25 Jun/Thu 26 Jun
Semi-finals TBA (ITV first choice)
Sun 29 Jun
Final 91Èȱ¬
Late night highlights ITV
