The Premier League "has its glitz, the Champions League its glamour," according to Martyn Ziegler of the LONDON TIMES. Yet "the grit of the FA Cup puts those more lustrous competitions into the shade when it comes to the great British public tuning in to watch." Last week's fourth-round match between Arsenal and ManU is expected "to have set a record for viewers of a domestic match this season," beating the 6.6 million who watched Wolverhampton Wanderers beat Liverpool 2-1 in the previous round. The FA Cup has the benefit of BBC coverage, "because for all the proliferation of digital screens and gadgets, it appears that viewers still prefer to switch on to one of the main channels." The average number of viewers for an EPL game on Sky for the first months of the '17-18 season was 819,000 and "only 692,000" on BT Sport, according to Bloomberg’s figures. It is "not just the big boys who bring in the viewers" in the Cup, either. At the match's peak, 5.2 million people -- 8% of the U.K. population -- watched League Two side Newport County "turn over Leicester City in the third round." FA Head of Professional Game Relations Andy Ambler said, "I believe it is healthier now than 10 years ago. And although we have to respect tradition, we have to innovate as well. ... We have to freshen it up and make it relevant to a younger audience and actually we are gaining audiences in the younger age group that we were in danger of losing 10 years ago" (LONDON TIMES, 1/25).
