Scotland's Nations League ties set to remain free-to-air online as linear TV blackout looms again

Scotland’s upcoming Nations League Group A1 matches against Croatia and Poland later this month are set to remain free-to-air online unless a TV deal is struck between Viaplay and linear television broadcasters.

Viaplay holds the rights to all of Scotland’s competitive home and away matches until 2028. However, the Norwegian broadcaster last year decided to scale back its UK football operation and not run at bespoke TV channel, with their international football coverage affected the most.

While Premier Sports have taken up the League Cup and Scottish Cup agreements and coverage of Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors’ United Rugby Championships matches, the Scotland national football team’s games remain unaccounted for.

Scotland’s opening Nations League matches against Poland at Hampden and Portugal in Lisbon were screened by ITV after a late one-off deal was brokered, but last month the matches against Croatia in Zagreb and Portugal at Hampden were not purchased by mainstream broadcasters, meaning that the only way to watch the games live were on free-to-air YouTube channels run by Viaplay and the Scottish Football Association.

Scotland's last match against Portugal was not shown on TV. | SNS Group

Unless Viaplay reach an agreement with any interested parties over sub-contracting the game against Croatia at Hampden on Friday, November 15 and then Poland away in Warsaw on Monday, November 18, then Scotland fans not in attendance will once more turn to online streaming platforms that will be offered up by Viaplay and the SFA.

Viaplay have a contractual obligation to produce the matches after completing the rights deal with UEFA and will therefore show the match online unless they sell to another broadcaster, while the SFA will also use the feed on its digital outputs. The Scotsman has learned that 914,000 people tuned in to watch the 0-0 draw with Portugal on the SFA YouTube channel, while 597,000 people took in the 2-1 defeat by Croatia on the same platform.

Scotland’s 2-1 defeat by Croatia last month was the first national team match in ten years that was not available on linear television. The collapse of Viaplay has also impacted Northern Ireland and Wales, although the latter’s matches against Turkey and Iceland will be on S4C and the BBC iPlayer. England have their own deal with ITV for their games.

Scotland, who named their squad for the double-header on Monday, currently sit bottom of Nations League Group A1 on one point and will need to win at least of one their remaining two matches to avoid automatic relegation to Group B.