Football Journalist Accreditation Discussion

I wanted to write a short blog on the recent journalist accreditation issues with the Football League. 

For anyone who did not hear about this, just before the start of the football season there were negotiations between newspaper agencies, press officers and The Football League.  Without going in to detail as to who was involved, the negotiations were to discuss the control over how much journalists would be able to update whilst at the match, in terms of live online match reports and social media updates (E.G. Twitter).

The Football League and various clubs were worried that by allowing journalists to provide immediate live updates, that it may deter people from attending the match itself and not spending their money on admittance.

Therefore, my question would be; is news, media and press coverage something that can still be controlled and what effects will this have on not only the league but individual clubs?  Is there already too much happening in the media to limit the amount a journalist or press officer can report during a game? We have the Saturday afternoon Sky Sports News programme which shows instant goal updates and even has live match updates from various reporters.  Commentary is readily available for all games on local radio stations and these are easily accessible on the internet and have been for some time.  On top of this, most fans who now attend games tweet during the match at every goal, tackle and bad refereeing decision!

But, is this a negative? Surely this is only creating a much wider community of football fans and allowing more people to interact with each other? I imagine there are many football fans that have interacted with somebody on Twitter they didn’t previously know and were able to strike a conversation about the game.  I still think people attending matches will continue, regardless of the live media coverage.  The bigger question, is will this hinder the potential growth of attendances at football matches?

I think I could probably talk about this all day, so I’ll stop myself there and would love to hear some views on this…

@Rich__Norton