Premiership TV rights deal

[kyser_soze]

Compromise deal struck over TV football rights

Tara Conlan
Thursday November 17, 2005

The Premier League has reached a settlement with the European commission over the television rights to live Premiership games.

After months of wrangling, the EC today claimed the compromise deal would give fans "greater choice and better value".

The deal is also set to end BSkyB's exclusive 13-year hold on live coverage of top-flight English football.

The competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, said although the league's improved offer brought "this long-running case closer to a satisfactory outcome" the decision still needed to be ratified by the commission's member states. The commission will then issue a final decision "no later than the first quarter of 2006".

Rights to the 2007/08 season will be offered in a "fair and transparent" way, the commission said today.

The league is offering to sell live games in six "balanced" packages with no one bidder allowed to buy all six.

Although details of what games will be in each package have not been revealed, the fact the league says they will be "balanced" will allay the EC's fear that a rival to Sky will be left to pick up a "runt" package of the least popular games.

"The commitments offered by the Premier League should ensure that the media rights are sold in a fair and transparent manner and give British football fans greater choice and better value," said Ms Kroes in a statement this afternoon.

"The European commission has received improved commitments from the English Football Association Premier League (FAPL) regarding the sale of the FAPL's media rights for the 2007 season onwards.

"The commitments follow an investigation by the commission, under EC Treaty competition rules on restrictive business practices (Article 81), into the sale by the FAPL of media rights to the Premier League competition on behalf of the individual clubs."

The EC said a trustee will be appointed to ensure the Premier League sticks by its commitment.

"Live TV rights will be sold in six balanced packages with no one bidder being allowed to buy all six packages. Packages will be sold to the highest standalone bidder for each package, and bids other than simple standalone bids will be disregarded. The auction will be monitored by a trustee, selected by the commission, who will report to the commission as to whether the commitments entered into by the FAPL have been followed."

The Premier League chairman, Richard Scudamore, outlined the compromise deal to club chairmen today.

Sorry about the complete c'n'p but you need to register to read the media section...

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1644718,00.html

 

[rennie]

you could just linked this to the BBC story! I reckon it's a good thing...

 

[kyser_soze]

Don't get the Beeb ticker...

Seems good - surely anything that breaks the monopoly on broadcast rights is a good thing tho?

 

[rennie]

Don't get the Beeb ticker...

Seems good - surely anything that breaks the monopoly on broadcast rights is a good thing tho?

my thoughts exactly.

 

[T & P]

In particular when the company currently in possession of the monopoly is Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB.

 

[stavros]

Murdoch should never have got hands scummy little hands on it in the first place. I will never understand why the top domestic division of the national sport wasn't under the government's protected events list. It's fantastic news but would be even better if the coverage was toned down to one match a week, the money split 20 ways equally and it was only on terrestrial.

 

[nightowl]

does this actually mean that we might see some footy on terrestrial tv?

 

[tangerinedream]

Murdoch should never have got hands scummy little hands on it in the first place. I will never understand why the top domestic division of the national sport wasn't under the government's protected events list. It's fantastic news but would be even better if the coverage was toned down to one match a week, the money split 20 ways equally and it was only on terrestrial.

surely the money should be split 92 ways? Thus negating the massive gap in incomes betwixt pr£mi£rshit and everyone else? then we might start back to a truly competitive game, where relegation wasn't the disaster it is now

Also the gov't doesn't have much on the protected list, cos Rupert Murdoch, through his scummy rags, controls public opinion, therefore Tony has to keep him sweet, which is why, despite all the stupid ball heading with Keggy Keegle, it's taken Europe to actually do anything about the state of the game.

Why restrict the coverage to the pr£mi£ershit anyway? isn't a top of the table lower league clash more intersting than a mid table scrap between average premier sides?

 

[Rocket Romano]

People are under the impression this is a good deal.

All that will be available are the Category F games as Sky will outbid everybody else for Category A-E. These are the games that Sky tried to flog off last time around and nobody wanted.

I think its the 5.15 Saturday/1pm Saturday games. So expect Portsmouth V Sunderland. Sky will keep all the good games

 

[T & P]

I don't know about the times in which games will be shown, but it was said several times yesterday that all six packages will have the same number of high-profile games. No package will be superior to others in terms of strenght of teams/games.

 

[aylee]

I wonder if this will also mean that more games are played when they should be played .... 3pm on a Saturday.

 

[Termite Man]

surely the money should be split 92 ways? Thus negating the massive gap in incomes betwixt pr£mi£rshit and everyone else? then we might start back to a truly competitive game, where relegation wasn't the disaster it is now

Also the gov't doesn't have much on the protected list, cos Rupert Murdoch, through his scummy rags, controls public opinion, therefore Tony has to keep him sweet, which is why, despite all the stupid ball heading with Keggy Keegle, it's taken Europe to actually do anything about the state of the game.

Why restrict the coverage to the pr£mi£ershit anyway? isn't a top of the table lower league clash more intersting than a mid table scrap between average premier sides?

Damn right ! More league 2 games less premiership I say

 

[Rocket Romano]

I don't know about the times in which games will be shown, but it was said several times yesterday that all six packages will have the same number of high-profile games. No package will be superior to others in terms of strenght of teams/games.

Nobody can afford to match Skys offer and the Premiership can't afford to lose that money, Sky tried to ditch the FA Cup so the FA offered more packages to them

In terms of coverage, the BBC is a joke, its commentary team clueless, analysts repetitive, camera and technology work non existent and somehow it gets away with calling BBC i (its not a rip off from Sky Active honest!) ITV is just slightly better.

And Sky is a no-lose position. It has 8m subscribers and released figures last month showing less than half of its subs actually watch Sky Sports. Entertainment and docs are its main selling points.

 

[stavros]

From what I've seen of Sky's coverage in pubs and at Uni it's nowhere near the standard of the BBC's. They seem to oversell every single little bit of action as if it's the crux of the entire game and obviously you have the horrible issue of adverts. And not to mention the fact that I like the pundits on the Beeb, save perhaps Lawro.

Blair should stamp down on Murdoch on all fronts but is obviously too chicken to act. Not only does he get the Sun's backing but no doubt Labour get the odd rather large donation from various miscelaneous Australians. I stand by my point that domestic football should be exclusive to terrestrial telly. Or it somehow of less national interest than the Boat Race?

 

[tangerinedream]

From what I've seen of Sky's coverage in pubs and at Uni it's nowhere near the standard of the BBC's. They seem to oversell every single little bit of action as if it's the crux of the entire game and obviously you have the horrible issue of adverts. And not to mention the fact that I like the pundits on the Beeb, save perhaps Lawro.

Blair should stamp down on Murdoch on all fronts but is obviously too chicken to act. Not only does he get the Sun's backing but no doubt Labour get the odd rather large donation from various miscelaneous Australians. I stand by my point that domestic football should be exclusive to terrestrial telly. Or it somehow of less national interest than the Boat Race?

No, but the boat race isn't actually worth anything to Rupert dandelion and burdoch. I don't really care if it's on the telly or not, but i do care how the tv money is distributed and if it goes purely to prem clubs, who can nick the best non premier players at will, then it's no major improvement as far as i can see.
Actually, no, sorry, it's an improvement, but the issue is deeper than who can view, it's about where and how the revenue is distributed and a cachet of clubs protecting their own self interests. You are bang on about sky's non stop hype machine - somehow they've fooled a nation into thinking the top flight started in 1993