A foot inside the door?

I must admit that coming from a football orientated mind, I tend to disregard any bias advertising or programs revolving around the sport. Hand in hand with this, any rugby advert makes me cringe - the build up to the recent Six Nations competition makes me wonder how many half decent adverts could have aired during air time of the adverts for the competition on the BBC. However, upon watching the Third Round FA Cup Replay Merseyside derby - yes, “that one” where Ben Gosling scored a 128th minute winner only to be missed due to wrongly timed advert breaks thanks to the now extremely and publicly embarrassed ITV - I’ve wondered why sports such as football get so much television coverage. Viewing figures are what come flooding into my head; it’s fairly obvious that major sporting events conjure up millions upon millions of spectators time after time. However, surely importance of programme topics should be accounted for?I’m certainly not one to criticise - I would never intentionally want to block sport from my televised planner, only to be rewarded with a double bill of Garden Force for a start. However, I thought it was strange that “ITV news will follow the end of the football” came scrolling across the bottom of my screen. Maybe if “ITV News” was replaced by “The Jeremy Kyle Show” I wouldn’t find it that surprising - football > daytime chat shows. However, on the same note, surely the news > football? Real life happenings > entertainment, right? No. Why?