Anas Sarwar pledges to talk to Keir Starmer about making Scotland matches free-to-air if Labour wins power

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Anas Sarwar has pledged to talk to Keir Starmer about making Scotland men's football matches free-to-air if Labour wins power at Westminster.The Scottish Labour leader said he supports having the matches on terrestrial TV.Broadcasting is a power reserved to Westminster - meaning MSPs have no role in regulating the industry.Sarwar said he had not raised the issue with UK Labour leader Starmer but promised to "add it to the list".The Glasgow MSP also said he was currently "negotiating" with his family over going to Germany to watch Scotland in the European Championships.It comes as the Scottish Government announced it was launching a consultation on making qualifying matches free-to-air.Scotland's qualifying matches are currently shown on Norwegian broadcaster Viaplay, which fans must pay to use.England matches are shown on Channel 4 and ITV while Wales matches are shown on S4C.Sarwar was speaking on a visit to mental health charity Men Matter Scotland in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow on Monday morning.When asked by the Record if he believed Scotland matches should be shown on terrestrial TV, he said: "I agree with that."I believe we should have the principle of our international matches being shown on free-to-air television."The Euros is a good example.

It's going to be on free-to-air television. There's going to be lots of people across Scotland watching, hopefully Scotland in the upset of all time beating Germany in the opening game of the championships on their own home turf."That's going to be a great advert for Scotland and actually having free-to-air matches is really important."It's something that I've spoken to the SFA about before."So the short answer is yes, we support that principle, but we have to make a more