Some Champions League ties have been watched by fewer than 10,000 people on ITV Sport. Occasionally, researchers have given up looking for an audience for the channel's other football matches and recorded a big fat zero.
Sportsmail called on ITV before the Champions League quarter-finals, when a Liverpool-United semi-final was possible, to switch the Tuesday semi-final leg from its pay-TV channel.
It remains important that it should do so, now that United have become England's only representatives.
But publication of ITV's schedules for the rest of the month confirms that the majority of Britain's television public will see no more of the game in Leverkusen than highlights shown 30 minutes after the final whistle. Now it even seems that ITV has no say in the matter.
The digital company says it cannot pay the next instalment of the £178.5m it owes the 72 League clubs, preferring instead to put itself into administration.
A decision is likely to be made early next week by the court on whether administrators Deloitte and Touche should start to sell off its assets and wind it up.
If that happens, UEFA made clear yesterday that ITV is obliged under its contract to screen the Tuesday game somewhere.
'UEFA will insist,' said a spokesman bluntly.
The question is where. If ITV Digital is wound up, would the rights automatically revert to ITV? Would it then switch the tie to ITV1 or to its free-to-air digital channel ITV2, which is available to about 25 per cent of viewers?
Or would the administrators be entitled to sell what remains of rights already paid for as a property of the creditors to the highest bidders? Sky Sports, perhaps?
It is all speculation because nobody at embattled ITV was returning calls. But UEFA said that its contract with ITV gave it the final say on any screening.
'They would have to present us with proposals,' said the spokesman. So far, nobody at ITV has.
ITV is between a rock and hard places. On the one side are 10 million potential viewers, a good number of advertisers and UEFA's programme sponsors, all anxious that the game should be shown to the widest audience.
Then there are clubs threatening to turn what they are owed into a £500m claim for losses caused by loss of promised TV coverage over the next two seasons.
And then there is UEFA. In a few weeks it opens negotiations with broadcasters for the next three-year deal for Champions League rights.
ITV might hope, after so many years with the UK rights, to be leading the queue. Unless everything is resolved to everybody's satisfaction soon, that may be a slim hope.
