On current form it's not likely his team will be featuring any time soon, but Newcastle United fan and BSkyB chief executive Jeremy Darroch knew just how vital it was to record a convincing victory in the tussle for live Champions League rights from 2009 to 2012.
The Champions League has been good to Sky, which shares coverage with ITV. Featuring the biggest European club teams in the biggest matches, the competition also gives Sky Sports a chance to showcase technical innovations such as its eight-way interactive coverage and high definition pictures.
Fears of five years ago that interest in the competition was beginning to pall as the same teams played one another too many times in cagey matches have all but disappeared. The success of English clubs has been a factor but Uefa and its broadcast partners have continued to tweak the format of the competition to retain interest. And while Sky has continued to trumpet the mantra that exclusive rights are not as important as they once were, even it acknowledges it couldn't afford to lose the Champions League.
One of those involved described it as the "most competitive auction ever" in terms of the number of participants determined to get their hands on the rights. For terrestrial broadcasters, live top flight football remains one of the few remaining guaranteed audience winners in a multichannel age, while for the pay TV operators it is a key subscription driver.
Wily veterans of dozens of similar auctions, Sky executives followed their time honoured tactic of going in high with a knockout bid. Sky's financial clout means that it can still bid at levels that are uneconomic for every other participant. The satellite broadcaster's bid for all live matches per round apart from the first pick on Wednesday, estimated by those close to auction at more than £240m over three years, was sufficient to persuade Uefa to take the games off the table.
Crucially, Sky's main pay TV rival Setanta was virtually spent up after its own rights spree splashing out on a share of FA Cup and England rights, on top of the £392m it paid to break Sky's dominance of live Premier League coverage. And when it comes to sheer financial muscle the terrestrial broadcasters just can't compete with Sky, as repeated Premier League auctions have proved.
Having lost its share of the FA Cup and England matches to a joint bid from Setanta and ITV, as well as its grip on all live Premier League games, Sky was determined to boost its share of Champions League games. With coverage extended to the final qualifying round and the first knock out round spread over more match days, from 2009 it will show 130 games compared to the current 103.
Attention will now turn to the penalty shoot out for the final Wednesday game, which gives the winning broadcaster first pick of any match taking place on that day, including exclusive coverage of one semi-final and live rights to the final. The suspicion must be that Uefa, which has always endeavoured to split rights between a pay TV operator and a free to air broadcaster to balance income with the widest possible exposure, is encouraging an auction between ITV and the BBC.
It would be a bitter blow for ITV to lose the Champions League after 16 years. Last year, the network averaged 5.9 milllion viewers per match, with a whopping 11.8 million tuning in for the all-English semi final between Liverpool and Chelsea. Not only are those big ratings for ITV, the matches also attract hard to reach, advertiser friendly young male viewers.
If ITV doesn't win the Wednesday match, many would question whether, having lost the European competition and gained the FA Cup/England matches, Michael Grade would be any better off. The BBC, meanwhile, will have to head off furious accusations of wasting licence fee payers' cash if it has to pay over the odds to see off an ITV bid.
Those close to the bidding say it is almost too close to call, with Channel Five also expected to submit a new bid, but make the BBC a narrow favourite.
However, the possibility of Sky returning to the table with a bid that is too good to turn down, thus securing exclusive coverage, shouldn't be discounted either. With bids due in by lunchtime today, the remaining loose ends should be tied up by the end of the week.
From a viewer's point of view how important is it that Uefa retains a free to air broadcaster for at least one game per round? Is the competition worth a hike of more than 50% in the amount broadcasters pay, or will it lose its appeal if Italian and Spanish clubs reassert their dominance? And is Uefa in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs by extending the competition over more "match nights"?
More fundamentally, do you want the BBC to spend your licence fee on further lining the pockets of Ashley Cole and friends? Or do you think live football coverage should be left to pay TV?
