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Just to add to the confusion for ITV Digital customers the ITV Sport channel will though continue and will become a free to air channel as from tomorrow. This will allow the Nationwide League play offs to be screened. Ironically this will make it available to more customers, presumably those with ITV Digital boxes who did not take out the sport subscription. Those customers with the Sky Sports service though will lose that tomorrow.
Earlier in the day a spokeswoman for ITV said, "ITV Sport will continue to broadcast. The channel is not in administration - the digital platform is." It seems they are ready to go out of their way to confuse people even now.
The really sad news in all of this is the fact that many people are losing their jobs, and that includes senior management of ITV Digital. It is estimated the job losses will be in four figures.
Then there is the Football League contract. I wonder just when heads are going to roll at the Football League for allowing this mess in the first place, surely they should have made sure they had a cast iron certainty that Granada and Carlton would be liable. After all this was not a deal with a long established set up such as Sky or the BBC.
The only positive news for the clubs is that at least they will be able to sell the product to another broadcaster but there will be nothing like the same amount of money involved and cloth is going to have to be cut accordingly.
The clubs really did play into the hands of ITV Digital, even before the season started the Burnley FC Official web site was promoting it all and even misleading people with information that in fact was not correct. This was not a Burnley problem though, our club like the other 71 clubs, were doing nothing other than keeping their side of the deal.
Will clubs go to the wall because of this? Surely any estimates of 30 are high but even if it is one club then it is one club too many. The BBC tonight have even suggested that some clubs under the biggest threat are planning a synchronised collapse. The clubs, the BBC say, reportedly believe the mass administration move would give them a legal get-out clause for many player contracts, so allowing a huge cut in wage costs.
Whatever does happen now this is without doubt a bad day for English football and one that it may never recover from. There are no positives and all 72 clubs are set to lose out.