Obvious bias in sports

[Cornish Steve]

It happens all the time, and almost always in favor of the big, media-favourite teams. A few cases in point I've noticed of late:

1) Smaller teams ask for games to be canceled because of COVID cases, and their requests are denied. Bigger teams demand everything continues because, of course, they can easily swap out seven or eight players whereas smaller teams simply cannot.

2) Several penalties were given this past week, many of them decisive in a win, and almost all were awarded to the top four teams.

3) Then there was Liverpool's opening goal against Newcastle in the week. The referee failed to stop play when a Newcastle defender had possible concussion. Worse, Liverpool were played onside only because of this injured player lying on the ground.

4) Watching today's match between Spurs and Liverpool, commentators kept writing off Spurs players as no longer at their best whereas Liverpool players were brilliant and could do no wrong - despite the fact that the game finished in a draw and Spurs should have won easily.

5) I know I rib people about English cricket, but take these quotes from the BBC site: "Jos Buttler brilliantly caught Australia opener Marcus Harris", "a stunning Stokes catch", "Buttler taking another fine catch", and about an opener scoring a duck, "In fairness he got a good ball." If you read only these and similar comments, you might be mistaken for believing England are doing well.

This all reminds me of David Coleman's classic live commentary at the 1974 Olympics (or thereabouts): "the British runner beat the world's best to claim the bronze."

American commentary is simply awful, and the media channels tend to show only sports in which America wins (such as endless beach volleyball and basketball at the expense of 'proper' Olympic events). I hope British sport doesn't deteriorate into even greater bias, with top teams always being given the benefit of the doubt.

[Cornish Steve]

I find this decision so disappointing - but predictable. It's clearly biased toward the top teams with squads deep enough to field two first teams. The reason it's predictable is that, for sure, the entertainment and betting industries applied the necessary pressure.

[barryj]

There is clearly bias in commentary and some of those points are valid. The so called ‘big’ teams will want to play the games due to bigger squads but even more importantly for them huge fixture congestion later in the E season if they’re not played and the AFCON.