You are in the pub. You have a pint in your hand and are discussing the football match. Your team started well, but somehow you ended up losing. What went wrong? If only your striker had scored that chance. If only your defender had made that tackle. After the event, it is easy to work out what went wrong. It is easy to find someone to blame.
That, in essence, is what happened in The Football League v Edge Ellison [2006]. On 15 June, 2000, the Football League negotiated an amazing deal with ONdigital for the television rights to Football League matches – £315m over three years for the rights to screen games such as Hartlepool versus Barnet and Hereford versus Grimsby. But then it all went wrong. In March 2002, ONdigital went into administration and, in October 2002, it descended into liquidation. At the time of its demise, it still had £178.5m to pay the Football League.
