{"id":323926,"date":"2025-08-07T01:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T01:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323926\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T01:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T01:08:13","slug":"irish-league-football-ballymenas-jim-ervin-says-better-broadcasting-deals-are-crucial-for-ni-clubs-to-close-gap-to-southern-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323926\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish League football: Ballymena&#8217;s Jim Ervin says better broadcasting deals are crucial for NI clubs to close gap to southern rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jim Ervin believes Northern Ireland football needs more lucrative broadcast deals to raise standards\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/on_v_Ballymena_0022.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Jim Ervin believes Northern Ireland football needs more lucrative broadcast deals to raise standards<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ballymena United manager Jim Ervin has urged the football authorities to find more funding for clubs and thrash out a more lucrative broadcast deal to stop the Irish League from falling further behind the League of Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ervin\u2019s comments follow Northern Ireland Football League Chief Executive Gerard Lawlor\u2019s claim that Irish League clubs now have \u201chigh expectations\u201d on the revenue they will receive from television deals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Ervin believes Northern Ireland football needs more lucrative broadcast deals to raise standards Ballymena United manager Jim&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[117021,1144,8541,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-323926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-ballymena-united","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-sports-direct-premiership","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114984812828163271","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}