The BBC’s decision to broadcast 38 live Serie A matches this season is good news for football viewers. It is also a decision that invites an awkward question, why can the BBC find room for one live Italian league fixture every round, yet refuses to make Scottish football a consistent part of its live match coverage schedule, beyond the one Championship game every Friday night?
BBC ALBA and BBC Sport will show 38 matches from Italy’s top flight during the 2026-27 campaign. Nineteen will be broadcast on BBC ALBA with Gaelic and English co-commentary, while a further 19 will be streamed on BBC iPlayer with English commentary.
There is plenty to interest Scottish viewers. Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour play for Massimiliano Allegri’s Napoli side, while Lewis Ferguson is preparing for his fifth season with Bologna. Che Adams and Lennon Miller add to the Scottish international presence at Torino and Udinese respectively, while former Hibernian players Kieron Bowie and Josh Doig are part of the Sassuolo squad.
The agreement will also revive memories of Channel 4’s much-loved Football Italia, the Sunday programme that made Serie A essential viewing for UK football fans in the 1990s. Its mixture of great players, colourful stadiums and Italian football culture gave the league an identity that extended beyond the matches themselves. The BBC’s decision to make this new package available free of charge is welcome.
But the question remains - why Serie A? The BBC is not simply another sports broadcaster competing for the largest possible audience. It is a publicly funded institution with a responsibility to reflect the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. The BBC’s Royal Charter says that it should serve audiences across the UK and represent the diversity of the communities to which it broadcasts.
So Scottish football should be at the heart of that obligation, not an occasional addition to a schedule dominated by larger competitions and more commercially attractive properties.
The BBC does provide coverage. Scotland’s men’s internationals are shown live, selected Scottish Cup ties – including the final – receive live treatment, and Sportscene broadcasts highlights of every Premiership match. BBC Radio Scotland’s Sportsound offers live commentary on Premiership fixtures, Scottish and League Cup ties and Scotland internationals. The BBC also maintains an online Scottish football section carrying news, results, fixtures, video and audio.
Yet this is increasingly coverage that feels designed to fulfil a requirement rather than to help grow the game. The Premiership is reduced to highlights packages crammed into the least amount of time possible. The Championship, League One and League Two receive intermittent attention, if at all. The Highland League and Lowland League are generally visible only through online reports, tables and the occasional Scottish Cup tie.
That absence matters because Scottish football is not merely under-covered; it is routinely dismissed. In large parts of the English football conversation, the Scottish game is treated as a punchline. “Pub league” is the familiar insult, deployed as though an entire football culture can be reduced to a joke about standards, crowds, or Celtic and Rangers.
The phrase is not analysis. It is shorthand for contempt. Scottish football is belittled whenever the opportunity presents itself, particularly when one of its leading clubs suffers a heavy defeat in Europe or when a Scottish player fails to make an impression in England. Some English pundits speak about the Scottish Premiership with a casual sneering confidence they would rarely apply to a comparable league elsewhere in Europe. The same people who demand respect for England’s lower divisions regard Scotland’s entire domestic game as beneath serious consideration.
That attitude has not been confined to the loudest voices on commercial radio or social media. BBC pundits have also, at times, contributed to the sense that Scottish football is something to be mocked rather than understood. The BBC has employed commentators and analysts who have treated the Scottish game as an object of ridicule, whether through lazy comparisons, dismissive observations or the suggestion that its competitions are somehow inherently less legitimate.
There is a difference between fair criticism and habitual condescension. Scottish football has serious problems. The governance of the game is not fit for purpose, the commercial model is amateurish, stadium infrastructure varies wildly and the gap between the leading clubs and the rest is obvious. None of that justifies reducing the entire sport to “pub league” mockery.
Nor does it explain why a public broadcaster should appear more willing to invest in the presentation of Italian football - in Scots Gaelic for that matter - than in telling the stories of clubs on its own doorstep.
If the BBC can commit to 38 live matches from Serie A, it could surely create a more meaningful schedule for Scottish football. That does not require the broadcaster to show every match, or to pretend that a Highland League fixture would attract the same audience as Napoli against Inter. Public-service broadcasting is not supposed to be governed solely by the biggest available audience.
Regular live lower-league match coverage and a proper highlights show would give clubs and communities a platform that they rarely receive. It would create greater visibility for sponsors and local businesses, offer experience to young commentators and producers, and allow viewers to see a fuller picture of football in Scotland. The game does not begin and end with the Premiership’s leading clubs.
Matches from the Lower Leagues could be presented as more than 90 minutes of football. It could be an opportunity to explore the history of a club, the character of a town, the work of volunteers or the financial pressures facing teams outside the top flight. The BBC could build a programme around the people and communities that make Scottish football what it is.
Instead, the broadcaster often appears to reinforce the hierarchy that already dominates the British football media. English football is presented as the centre of the universe. Scotland is discussed when Celtic or Rangers enter a European competition or play against one another, when the national team qualifies for a major tournament or when a Scottish player becomes relevant to an English audience. The rest is left to fend for itself and ignored.
There is also an obvious opportunity for BBC ALBA. It would be wrong to blame the channel, or Gaelic broadcasting, for the imbalance. BBC ALBA plays an important role in Scottish cultural life, and Gaelic commentary on Serie A is an imaginative way of using the language in a modern sporting context.
The issue is not that Serie A is being shown in Gaelic. The issue is that the BBC appears able to develop an ambitious European football project for BBC ALBA while failing to create an equally imaginative project around showcasing Scottish football itself.
Why not broadcast regular Highland League or Lowland League matches with Gaelic commentary and English co-commentary? A game from Brora, Buckie, Fraserburgh or Linlithgow would connect the language with Scottish clubs, Scottish places and Scottish communities. It could be more culturally resonant than importing a fixture from Italy and placing Gaelic around it.
The contrast has become increasingly difficult to ignore. The BBC is expanding its European football portfolio, with Serie A joining existing Bundesliga and La Liga content. Meanwhile, Scottish domestic football continues to receive a fragmented presence, with live coverage concentrated around internationals, selected cup games and occasional broadcast opportunities.
That does not prove the existence of a deliberate political strategy to suppress Scottish identity or weaken support for independence. Claims of state media subterfuge require evidence, and it would be irresponsible to present suspicion as fact. But the suspicion has not appeared from nowhere. When Scottish stories are routinely confined to Scotland-only platforms, when domestic football beyond the top flight is treated as peripheral and when the BBC can make a substantial commitment to an overseas league while offering little equivalent at home, viewers are entitled to question the broadcaster’s priorities.
The BBC should be capable of showing both. There is no reason why Scottish viewers cannot watch Serie A on BBC ALBA and BBC iPlayer while also receiving regular, ambitious coverage of their own clubs.
The broadcaster already has the presenters, commentators, digital platforms, radio output and established brands. What appears to be missing is the editorial ambition.
Scottish football is not short of drama or character. The lower divisions contain historic clubs, fierce rivalries and communities whose relationship with football is every bit as intense as that of supporters at the country’s biggest teams. The Highland and Lowland leagues offer stories that are rarely told nationally, despite being central to the identity of the places they represent.
The BBC has decided that Serie A is worthy of spending the money to show it across their platforms. It should now explain why their Scottish football coverage doesn’t extend beyond token coverage.