ITV does a great job of promoting its football coverage – then fails to deliver due to technical glitches

On a positive note, ITV’s new film promoting its Euro 2020 coverage, which features Stormzy, Dave and Ian Wright, is excellent. An optimistic and inspirational take on how to move on from the past and create a modern vision of England – the Gareth Southgate version, not the Boris Johnson one.

But ITV’s coverage failed to deliver, and fans watching England v Denmark on the ITV Hub were frustrated by technical glitches. As if the match wasn’t tense enough, the ITV coverage via Apple TV kept dropping out, with viewers forced to watch ads before being launched back into the game, only to drop out again.

ITV apologised for the “inconvenience,” but it looks pretty amateur, and will give even more viewers a reason to choose the BBC over commercial TV when the two channels go head-to-head on Sunday night for the England v Italy final.

The match was shown exclusively on ITV last night, and if there was ever a more obvious example of advertising as intrusive and interruptive, it’s hard to imagine. Surely they could come up with a different model during big events like this – who needs to see a Just Eat ad when the stadium perimeter is lined with their hoardings throughout the whole match?