SPL chief sees more than just Old Firm blood lust in Scottish football's surging TV figures

The 162,122 average attracted for matches on Sky and ESPN last season is 47 per cent up on Setanta's showings for two years ago. In all, 9.7 million watched Scottish top-flight encounters on these platforms. And crowning the emphatic rise in numbers is the fact that the final Old Firm derby in April produced a first one million-plus in-home audience for a Scottish game screened by Sky.

By November, the SPL must inform current broadcast partners Sky and ESPN whether they will stick with their present arrangement until 2014 or activate a release clause that would be triggered next summer.

The five-year, 65m television deal the SPL signed from a position of weakness in 2009 followed Setanta's demise only months after they had agreed to plough 139m into the Scottish top flight across five years. Now, with a 35 per cent increase in BBC Scotland's figures for Sportscene meaning 122.8 million watched Scottish football in some form last season, the SPL's hand has surely been strengthened in any future negotiations. The governing body's chief executive Neil Doncaster does not demur.

"Clearly the figures do show real, tangible interest and they can't do any harm (in any rights discussions]," he says. "It is a huge uplift in the viewing figures and that indicates a real upsurge in interest in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League. That can only bode well for future interest in our rights."

Doncaster won't say whether the SPL would be bold enough to test that interest in the open market. He won't rule anything out, and that includes the possibility of seeing what independent companies -"one or two new entrants from elsewhere in the world who have been sniffing around the UK and European markets" - have to offer. There is also the old chestnut of investigating the viability of their own SPL television channel or, more likely, offering either Sky or ESPN exclusive rights to the 60 matches they currently split equally in return for considerably improved terms.

"Anything is possible," Doncaster says. Surely the very least that is possible is that the worth of the SPL in televisual terms can be pushed up from the present rate of around 13m a season, a figure Doncaster blames on Setanta's demise.

"If you go back to 2009 and the collapse of Setanta, the new deal was effectively the only deal in town and had to be put together very quickly," he says. "And that meant any proper marketing process could not be undertaken. I think we have to concentrate on bringing more money into Scottish football and ensure we get a fair value for our rights."That process involves working with existing broadcast partners, potential other partners and a potential own-channel solution that has been put into place in Holland and is being explored in France and Belgium. Those are works in progress and we need to make sure we have all potential avenues laid out, (that] we understand (what] the risk and opportunities for each of them are, and we make sure we bring more money into the league. Ultimately, the quality of the league is determined by the players, and the players you have are determined by the money you bring in. It all comes down to wages."

The improved revenue that could be accrued through the growth in television audiences for the SPL might fall into the category of the wages of sin. For it is beyond dispute that the rising interest levels in the Scottish game last season proved the old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Scottish football teemed with publicity of the most poisonous variety - the ding-dong Old Firm encounter that ended with Neil Lennon squaring up to Ally McCoist, prompting police to rail against the drink-fuelled public disorder and domestic violence that attaches itself to the fixture and resulted in a Scottish government summit; the parcel bomb and death threats that caused the treatment of Celtic manager Lennon to receive a global audience; the charges of sectarianism against Rangers by UEFA; the poppy protest by Celtic supporters and, of course, the referees' strike. They all combined to ensure football in this country achieved a global reach. Sky both lapped up and cranked up all these developments.

In the case of the last meeting of the Glasgow clubs that turned out to be box office gold, the attraction was one part that it was a title decider - and nine parts that thousands of police had been drafted in to prevent open warfare in Ibrox and on Glasgow streets that never threatened to materialise.

Doncaster, predictably, has a different take.

"I have colleagues south of the Border and, anecdotally, there were games last year, at their own clubs, they were switching over from because they found them uninteresting and switching to what they found to be gripping, passionate games up here. There was a real upsurge in interest and it's not just at the edges, and not simply the scandals and the bad news, but actually people wanting to tune in and watch the games in their entirety.

"The passion and drama we have had was a big part of it and the closeness of the title race another part of it. Going further, if we were able to create further tension through play-offs and a further relegation place that can only add to the excitement."

What Doncaster cannot do is promise another season like the last. And for that everyone connected to the game, with the exception of ratings chasers, will be relieved.