Richard Keys seems to be enjoying himself in the Middle East with Bein Sports, and hasn't been shy of criticising his former employers at Sky Sports since his and Andy Gray's sacking. For example, Keys and Gray present a Monday night football programme, which Keys pettily refers to as the real MNF every week:
ALL this week's PL games are live on beINSports. Join us tonight for the real MNF as Andy Gray looks back at the weekend
— Richard Keys (@richardajkeys) April 3, 2017
While he has taken a couple of pops at Sky in the past, Keys has gone further this week. Speaking to the Daily Record, Keys has called for viewers to boycott Sky Sports in support of Scottish football. Keys believes that Scottish football is under-funded by the British broadcasters, and says that it will take collective action on behalf of viewers in order to force through an improvement:
The SPFL are currently in a contract with Sky and BT until 2020, and a Daily Record investigation revealed that the deal is worth less to Scotland than the equivalent deal is worth to the leagues in Denmark, Poland, and Greece.
In response to that investigation, the paper spoke to Keys, who called for strike action by viewers in order to force London-based media to funnel more resources to the Scottish league.
I wouldn’t advocate people taking to the streets to make their views known but the people of Merseyside deserve enormous credit for the boycott of The Sun newspaper after they were scandalously treated by it post Hillsborough. They simply refused to buy it.
Maybe it’s time the people of Scotland took a similar stand. Maybe they have to send a message to London they’re not prepared to put up with this. What’s the best way to do that? Stop spending 35 quid a month on a Sky subscriptions.
Scottish football is never going to get better unless it has the wherewithal to be able to so. And that requires somebody comes and spends some money on it.
It needs people who are prepared to invest in it and to grow it, not try to take it on the cheap.
