The Macclesfield Town spokesperson has criticised the decision by the television companies to select every Manchester United FA Cup match as part of the live television coverage. John Harris has pointed out that every Manchester United match in the first few rounds of the FA Cup have been selected as part of the live coverage. In fact, BBC have shown Manchester United matches on 18 occasions between 2005 and 2008. Sky, who then followed BBC for the FA cup coverage, showed United matches on four occasions. Since the arrival of ITV as the official coverage provider of the FA Cup, all the United matches have been shown without exception.
As part of the live television coverage, clubs will receive around £ 140,000 in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Harris has said that this amount is paltry to United, who recently had revenues of around £ 400 million for the last financial year. He has said that this amount will be extremely crucial in the survival of Macclesfield Town, who were recently relegated to the conference. Harris has said that television companies no longer select matches based on the potential for upset, but rather go for the matches of big clubs like Manchester United.
“When you put it like that it is farcical. When we beat Cardiff City here in the third round, the scenes at our stadium were magnificent and a giant-killing could be on the cards again. No disrespect, but is Manchester United playing Fulham more attractive to a football purist? For us, that money, £135,000, would be massive, it would save our season after relegation to the Conference, which was a huge blow,” said Harris, whose team hosted the Premier league club Wigan in the fourth round of the FA Cup. They lost the match 1-0 and were knocked out of the competition.