Up until only a handful of days before Nottingham Forest hosted Chelsea on the final day of the Premier League season, Sky Sports had planned to present the match live from the City Ground.
After all, it was the marquee game of the weekend given Liverpool had already sealed the title and Southampton, Leicester City and Ipswich Town were heading back to the Championship.
The winner of Forest versus Chelsea would qualify for the Champions League. It was the story of the day -- and that is why Sky Sports had chosen the City Ground to present their final-day coverage.
But in the lead up to the fixture, which Chelsea won 1-0 to earn a spot in Europe's elite club competition, Forest denied access to Gary Neville, the former Manchester United and England defender turned Sky Sports pundit.
This led to the broadcaster reversing its decision to present from the City Ground, instead opting to film at its west London studios. Neville labelled the club's decision to deny him access an "unprecedented action".
It is important to note Forest have not breached Premier League rules. Top-flight clubs have the autonomy to grant matchday accreditation as they please.
The backdrop to this is that Neville was critical of Evangelos Marinakis, Forest's owner, after he entered the pitch to speak with head coach Nuno Espirito Santo after a 2-2 draw against Leicester City earlier this month. Neville suggested Nuno should contemplate leaving the club following the incident, before calling Marinakis' actions "scandalous".
After the match, Nuno said the incident was Marinakis showing his passion for Forest, while the owner mirrored these comments on Instagram and stated it was an injury to forward Taiwo Awoniyi that concerned him. Awoniyi would eventually be placed into an induced coma after the injury and undergo emergency surgery on his abdomen. A few days later, the club posted on X, saying Marinakis went on to the pitch because he is so "personally and emotionally invested" in the situation surrounding Awoniyi.
This incident followed a previous outburst from Neville that led to Sky apologising to Forest in July for "any offence caused" after he accused the club of acting like a "mafia gang" following their 2-0 loss at Everton in April 2024.
Forest had sent a legal letter to Sky in the wake of Neville's comments, which came after the club had publicly criticised the officiating during their defeat at Goodison Park.
However, the elephant in the room is that Sky Sports has pumped billions of pounds into the Premier League via broadcast deals, with Forest and all other clubs benefiting greatly from those TV rights sales.
So what could be the implications of Forest's decision to deny Neville access to their ground?
"It feels slightly odd in this day and age that a broadcaster that's spending billions of pounds on Premier League rights can't take its number one commentator into the ground," David Murray, a sports rights and negotiation advisor who spent more than a decade as the BBC's head of sports rights, tells The Athletic.
"I can see Sky not being happy with that and pushing the Premier League to change the rules next time the tender happens."
Over the weekend, Premier League sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, noted how there hadn't been any discussions between the league and Sky over changes to the rules that would prevent this from happening in the future.
Conversations to that effect will likely take place in the coming weeks, although top-flight clubs would need to agree to any changes.
Sky, as you would expect of a significant broadcast partner, is regularly in dialogue with the league and this will undoubtedly come up in conversation.
"It's simply not acceptable for clubs to dictate who should be the pundits," Roger Mosey, previously head of BBC Television News and director of the corporation's coverage of the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympic Games, says.
"There's no justification for Nottingham Forest's action. Sky Sports commentators should be free to say what they like, in the interests of fans and viewers."
Another former seasoned TV executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, doubted Sky will "make a big deal of it".
"It will likely be regarded as a one-off reaction from an angry owner," they said. "But Sky will no doubt register their dissatisfaction with the Premier League to avoid any recurrences."
After it emerged Neville had been denied access, he released a statement on Instagram.
"I've dished out my fair share of criticism and praise in the last 14 years of doing this job and have never come close to this unprecedented action," it read. "Personally, I think it's disappointing a great club like Nottingham Forest have been reduced to making such a decision.
"Whilst they have every right to choose who they let into their own stadium, it's symptomatic of things that have happened over the last 12 months with the club."
This isn't the first time a Premier League club has denied access to an important broadcaster, though.
Although the BBC was granted access to Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium, Sir Alex Ferguson, United's former manager, boycotted the corporation between 2004 and 2011 after the BBC made allegations against Jason Ferguson, his son, in a TV documentary.
"It was a massive issue because the BBC's Match of the Day didn't have access to the biggest draw, so they were constantly lobbying the Premier League, but the Premier League didn't do anything about it," Murray, then at the BBC, says.
"For whatever reason, they presumably didn't think it was worth picking the fight with Manchester United.
"That was going on in the early 2000s, so the fact that it's still going on now and the broadcast contract doesn't reflect that the broadcasters' needs in terms of access ultimately demonstrates the power of the Premier League when they sell their rights."
At the most extreme end of the table, if a resolution cannot be found between Sky Sports, Nottingham Forest and the Premier League, then the broadcaster could just decide against screening live games from the City Ground.
Each club receives a facility fee just shy of £1million ($1.36m) when they are shown live in the United Kingdom, so Sky opting to only show the minimum number of games (10) they are required to would hit Forest in the pocket.
That said, it's incredibly unlikely Sky Sports, or any broadcaster for that matter, would take such action.
From next season, Sky Sports will increase the number of top-flight games it shows from 128 to at least 215 as part of the new four-year broadcast deal that kicks in.
A sensible resolution in Murray's eyes would be for a new agreement to be signed between the Premier League and its broadcasters.
"Long term, I think Sky will probably be a bit more insistent on the clauses in the broadcast deal as to what they can and can't do because they can't have key members of their team being banned from big games when they're paying such ridiculous amounts," Murray says.
And more than two decades on from when Ferguson stopped talking to the BBC, Murray is staggered that nothing has changed from a contractual sense.
"I'm surprised the clubs still do have that power," he remarked.
"In an ideal world, the clubs wouldn't have a choice because it would be written into the broadcast agreement and if there was any kind of issue around a particular person, then that would be a conversation between the Premier League and the broadcaster.