These days football is big business, but football on television is even bigger business. A quick glance at Liverpool's opening Premier League fixtures illustrates just how important broadcasting the Reds into people's living rooms is, with six of their first eight matches being shown live on either Sky Sports or BT Sport.
Now a multi-billion pound industry, other players such as Amazon have made in-roads into the lucrative market, but 23 years ago predicted growth in the sector was very much on the radar of one small screen player and they had an ambitious plan to execute it.
It was on this day in 1999 that Granada announced that they had bought a 9.9% stake in Liverpool Football Club - the first British television company to do such a deal with a football club. The deal, worth £22million to the Reds, was designed to pave the way for the Merseyside club to launch its own dedicated television channel - LFC TV.
