39 SPORTS FOCUS Polish Football
n 16 September 1937, the BBC broadcast the first live televised football match to its UK audience. The game had limited
in the new medium to end, and it wasn’t until 1952 that television finally returned to Poland, and private television stations only started appearing after the fall of communism in 1989. Artur Kuszel, producer at Warsaw-based live production specialist Transmisjelive, tells us: “Poland has always been in a game of catch-up when it comes to broadcast innovation. While livestreaming content went through a boom in the late noughties, it wasn’t until a few years ago it started to take off in Poland. Now, everyone in Poland wants to livestream their content.” THE FA FOR ALL Kuszel talks to us specifically about Polski Związek Piłki Nożnej (PZPN), which is the
governing body of association football in Poland. Transmisjelive produces all the content for PZPN’s YouTube channel Łączy nas piłka (The Ball Connects Us), including action from the men and women’s national teams, the second league team and the youth team. It’s important to understand that Polish people are football-obsessed, and the country produces great footballers. Remember Zbigniew Boniek? In his active years he was scoring goals for Juventus and Roma, and he’s now the president of PZPN. But, historically, Polish football has been underserved to the global audience. “We have a fantastic relationship with PZPN, because it’s an association of sports personalities who feel the spirit of live
appeal – George Allison’s Arsenal were taking on Arsenal Reserves at Alexandra Palace – and only a few houses nearby could receive signal. Not much action was shown, and the programme only lasted 15 minutes – but the BBC had proved football worked on the small screen. At the same time, in a large country at the heart of the European continent famed for pierogi and the classical nocturnes of Frédéric Chopin, television was only just being introduced. This was short-lived due to the interruption of the second world war in 1939, which brought experimentation
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