The start of the 2023/24 Premier League season has sparked the return of the popular show Monday Night Football, but a lot of fans have been fuming with the introduction of former England Women’s star Karen Carney into it.
Over the last few years, Monday Night Football has earned a reputation for being an insightful football show – where the tactical aspects of a Premier League team or player are discussed and a lot of healthy debates take place.
Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, two Sky Sports regulars, have been the focal point of making MNF even more popular with their riveting debates and breakdowns of tactical viewpoints.
However, Sky Sports has opted to make some changes to its line-up and switch up the style of the Monday Night Football show.
They’ve roped in Karen Carney, who played for the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea’s Women’s team in the past and has 32 goals for the Three Lionesses.
What did Karen Carney say on MNF?
Carney enjoyed a respectable career and Sky felt that they’d bring more ‘equality’ to MNF by bringing in a female figure.
Perhaps they also believed the introduction of Carney to be a key aspect of bringing in more women to watch the MNF show because of the female representation.
With that being said, the ex-England Women’s star seems to be quite intent on bringing her views on Women’s Football and how it can be brought up to the Men’s level. After the FIFA Women’s World Cup final, where England lost to Spain, Carney was given a lot of air time in the previous MNF edition to voice her opinions on how Women’s Football can gain more popularity.
One of her opinions was for ‘equal funding’ for both the Men’s and Women’s squads for football teams in England. She said: “There’s a lot of stuff as well, where, if a brand sponsors a football club, well how much goes to men and how much goes to women?
“I think big brands, if they go ‘we’re sponsoring a football club’, and this is just my personal opinion, go 50/50. Go 50 per cent for the men, 50 per cent for the women.”
Basically, Carney indicated that sponsors who pay money to football clubs to promote themselves should make specifications when signing the deals and ensure that the team split that revenue equally to fund their male and female teams. However, most of the MNF viewers have not taken this well at all.
Fans furious with Carney’s appearance on MNF
That is perhaps because it isn’t really a logical statement made by the ex-England star at all. As one fan pointed out, the Premier League has a seasonal viewership of 4.7 billion – as compared to the Women’s Super League’s total viewership of 16 million. As a result, the WSL has a 0.3% as many viewers as the English football club.
So if one was to use Manchester United’s recent £90 million-a-year deal from Adidas as an example, then their female team would be owed just around £270,000-a-year based on viewership and popularity as compared to the Men’s senior team.
A lot of the MNF regular viewers have slammed Sky Sports for allowing Carney to ruin the MNF show and the general discussion flow that many enjoyed when Carragher and Neville were allowed to hold debates.
Some noticed how the two former Premier League stars did not even speak much on Carney’s opinions on Women’s Football, perhaps because the potential ‘backlash’ they could face if voicing conflicting opinions to hers.
Carney’s being blamed for changing up the MNF style to a proper, insightful football show where tactics and major games are dissected to one where she’s trying to now push her own opinions. Now, it could be that Sky are giving her the spotlight to promote the Women’s Football popularity amid the World Cup, but it remains to be seen if they keep letting her voice off her strong opinions and potentially risk losing viewers going forward.