Sports Rights: Football - FA Cup and England Internationals

DMC

ITV and Setanta, as widely flagged in the papers this morning, appear to have won the FA Cup and England internationals with a joint bid for £425 million.

Autumn 2008 is when the new deal starts. Interesting that Brian Barwick, the new head of the FA, is the former ITV Head of Sport.

10am
ITV to pay £275m for FA Cup
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2046492,00.html
Chris Tryhorn
Friday March 30, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk

ITV is to pay £275m to show FA Cup and England home international games, the lion's share of a £425m joint raid with Irish broadcaster Setanta.

Snatching the rights from the BBC and BSkyB represents an audacious coup by ITV executive chairman Michael Grade - but it is also an expensive gamble.

Setanta's £150m investment is its latest attempt to take on Sky, having secured a third of live Premiership games from this autumn for its pay-TV service.

The four-year deal, which kicks in from next year, gives ITV England's competitive home games, friendly away fixtures and first pick for FA Cup games.

Setanta will show England home friendlies, under-21 internationals, the Community Shield and FA Trophy.

It will also screen 17 out of the 31 FA Cup games televised each year, with ITV showing the rest. The two broadcasters will show a semi-final each and share the FA Cup final.

The deal, which will be formally unveiled by FA chief Brian Barwick later today, far exceeds the current £300m package shared by the BBC and Sky.

ITV will be hoping to bury memories of its ill-fated foray into Premiership highlights between 2001 and 2004, which was criticised for poor scheduling.

The deal is ITV's first major sports rights acquisition since Mr Grade, a keen sports fan, became ITV's chairman in January.

ITV is believed to have sealed the deal on Monday when Mr Grade made his final offer and asked for the deal to be locked down.

No more rival offers were to be accepted after that point, according to senior sources familiar with the negotiations.

Mossy Monk

Some balls if you watched the FA Cup and England matches in HD this year.

channelsurfer

oh great another reason for setanta to increase their irish subscription prices. Even though this deal did not include rights for the republic of ireland you can take it setanta will sow them up when its put out in the coming weeks. and with the GAA contract up in next year (presuming setanta get a fair bit of it) by august 08 sentanta could be charging near 25 euro a month to watch it in ireland to pay for all this.

fta keith

Channelsurfer, I totally agree with your view, as someone who only has totally FTA tv from Digital Satellite and analogue/Irish DTT pilot project for the 4 Irish basic tv channels, this could be very goo as TV3's owners invested into Setanta Sports as this section has appeared to state that from next season there will be only 12 3pm saturday Eng Prem games live on Setanta Sports Ireland what about TV3 might get the other 18 3pm Eng Prem games for Saturday

There could also be Eng FA cup games on TV3 from 2008-2009

I think TV3/Setanta sports coverage is very bad but I listen to BBC radio/RTE radio coverage for audio coverage

DMC

fta keith wrote:

what about TV3 might get the other 18 3pm Eng Prem games for Saturday

No chance. Setanta bought the rights for themselves, they agreed broadcast terms with the FA Premier League. If games were to be shown on TV3, that would have to have been announced at the time the deal was done.

Mossy Monk

fta keith wrote:

this section has appeared to state that from next season there will be only 12 3pm saturday Eng Prem games live on Setanta Sports Ireland

Where did it say that?

DMC

Interesting that The Independent led with this story yesterday, and its worrying that rights negioations depend on how favourable the bias has been towards them.

Sad day.

But its editorial likes the competition angle, and doesn't recognise the extra expense we will incur to continue to watch what we already have.

Bitter FA (or how Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen may have lost the BBC the right to screen England matches)
By James Lawton, Chief Sports Writer
Published: 31 March 2007

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2407996.ece

Football's leading television analysts Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen may have joked and criticised their way out of the highest profiles in sports broadcasting.

That was the astounding suggestion yesterday when the BBC was stripped of its rights to air FA Cup ties and England home games in a coup by ITV and the Irish-based satellite company Setanta. Against all expectations, the BBC and Sky were beaten by a combined £420m bid by their rivals. Three years into a four-year deal which the BBC claimed had brought stature back to the previously jaded FA Cup, the corporation now faces a ratings wilderness when ITV and Setanta take over its rights to cover the Cup and international games at the start of the 2008-09 season.

Though the winners were claiming a straightforward bidding victory, a position supported by the FA, it emerged that Brian Barwick, the FA's chief executive, had complainted bitterly about the recent critical tone of coverage of England's recent disappointing performances when he meet BBC executives just a few days before deal was announced yesterday.

The BBC were said to be shocked by the loss of their flagship football rights, which they regarded as one of their few sure-fire rating bankers. But it later emerged that the debacle was not quite the surprise it appeared when ITV and Setanta won the bidding.

An early warning came when Barwick attacked Lineker, Hansen and their new sidekick Alan Shearer for a "locker-room mentality" which created too much freewheeling and aggressive criticism of the England coach Steve McClaren and his currently under-performing team of superstars.

The host broadcaster had, it seems, treated the product with a little too much irreverence: too many double-takes by the laconic Lineker, too many critical tablets of stone being brought down from the moutain top by Hansen. One source close to the negotiating process said: "Barwick made it clear that the FA had a problem with the tone of the BBC analysis and the inference was made that this could be a problem in the negotiations."

As the process developed, ITV and Setanta outbid the BBC by £60m, but the suspicion remained that the BBC, now left with highlights scraps, had been ambushed in their belief that they would retain some of the cream of "public service free-to-air sports broadcasting".

A senior FA source last night admitted that there had been irritation with the BBC's coverage of recent internationals and that this had been mentioned to the BBC. But it was claimed that the decisive factor was the superiority of the rival bid. In the words of an FA insider: "In the past there has been no secret that we have been upset by some of the coverage. But the fact is this was a business decision."

The Sports minister Richard Caborn will no doubt be concerned at suggestions that a "muzzling" clause is being injected into football rights negotiations. The fear must be that football, conscious that it remains the most powerful asset in any TV ratings war, is now in the business of attempting to control "opinion". The operating imperative might be translated as "pay through the nose, and then curb your tongue".

Ironically, Sky sometimes has a lone voice of critical balance in the presenter Richard Keys. This required him this week during England's performance against Andorra to remind the panellists that when Steven Gerrard scored his decisive, "world-class" goals, he was competing against a teamtied in the world rankings with the Solomon Islands.

Meanwhile, Lineker and Hansen were perhaps reflecting on the cost of free speech in the troubled world of English football.

Brian Viner: Football punditry? It's a funny old game
Published: 31 March 2007
http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/comment/article2407992.ece

That nice Gary Lineker does not conform to most people's idea of a rabid dog, tearing mercilessly into the exposed hindquarters of over-sensitive England football managers. Can it really be that wounding criticism from Lineker, and from his BBC colleague Alan Hansen, was instrumental in the Football Association's decision to take FA Cup and England coverage away from Wood Lane.

If so, one's immediate conclusion is that Brian Barwick, the beleaguered chief executive of the FA, who not only resembles Captain Mainwaring of Walmington-on-Sea but also appears to be developing some of his more buffoonish tendencies, should get out more. Or stay in less, perhaps. But it is also worth considering the culture of football punditry, in particular as dispensed by Lineker and Hansen, themselves distinguished former players.

Lineker is paid to present rather than pontificate. But he has made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the England regime first under Sven Goran Eriksson and now under the hapless Swede's floundering first-lieutenant, Steve McClaren. Lineker, Hansen, and other BBC pundits, such as Mark Lawrenson, have become more opinionated the further removed they have become from their own playing careers, and the BBC's football coverage is the stronger for it.

By way of contrast, they have been joined on the Match of The Day sofa this season by the recently retired Alan Shearer who, manifestly anxious not to offend men he knows, deals mainly in harmless platitudes. Indeed, if the BBC's punditry were only in Shearer's hands, the corporation would surely have kept its rights. He was a barnstorming player, but as a analyst he only sticks the boot in tentatively.

Meanwhile, there are pundits on other television and radio networks considerably ruder about England than Lineker and Hansen but without their famous names. England being criticised by Lineker, who scored more goals for his country than anyone except Sir Bobby Charlton, is a little bit like the Queen bad-mouthing the Royal Family.

As for Hansen, it is worth noting that he remains the most decorated player to have graced England's most decorated club, Liverpool FC, and that Barwick grew up on the terraces at Anfield. It is safe to say that he once considered Hansen, an elegant centre-half, to be little short of a god. And that's the trouble with lionising people; when they turn on you, it hurts. To pursue a similar analogy, Barwick was for many years a high-ranking television sports executive, and it is perhaps rather satisfying for him to bite the hand that once fed him.

As for punditry itself, there is no doubt that it is influenced to some extent by competition. There was a time when the BBC never had to look to its laurels, but now it has to look at Sky and ITV, both of whom retain plenty of ex-pros, such as Andy Gray and Andy Townsend, who are capable of delivering unequivocal verdicts on what they see. There's no point in sitting mildly on the fence when the opposition is shouting loudly from the rooftops.

Barwick is perhaps sending out a message: continue to criticise us too vehemently and look what happens. But the truth is that the only thing that will give him and the England manager the coverage they crave is an improved team playing better football. I know Lineker well enough to know that little would give him more pleasure than England prospering. His middle name, after all, is Winston.

Leading article: Televised football rights - and wrongs
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2407978.ece
Published: 31 March 2007

The Football Association announced yesterday that it has awarded the live television rights for FA Cup matches and England internationals to ITV and Setanta Sports, the Irish satellite broadcaster. The pair offered £425m to take over the rights from the BBC and Sky Sports for four years from next August.

In one sense, this is a coda to the tale of Michael Grade's surprise departure from the BBC. The ITV chief executive made boosting ITV's coverage of live sports a priority when he joined last December. There are also concerns - highlighted by The Independent today - that the BBC has been punished by the FA for its critical coverage of England's recent performances on the field. Any hint of the organisation using its commercial leverage in this manner would, of course, be an outrage, even though ITV and Setanta offered more money.

But another interesting aspect of this story is actually the role Setanta is playing in challenging Sky's dominant position as a live sports broadcaster. For the past 15 years, Sky has been the only show in town as far as live Premiership football has been concerned. But now we have a new force. Last year, Setanta won the rights to show 46 live Premiership games from next season, finally breaking Sky's monopoly. It has also secured a six-year deal to televise the PGA golf tour, another former Sky trophy.

In the long term this can only be a good thing. It should mean more choice and better value for consumers. It also lessens the likelihood of price fixing. The truth is that the market in live sports coverage, especially football, has been considerably less than a free one. Sky has enjoyed a very cosy relationship with the Premiership since the breakaway league of England's top clubs was formed in 1992. Four years ago, the Premiership awarded all four of its rights packages to Sky. No other broadcaster got a look-in. The European Commission accused both in 2005 of breaking EU competition law and threatened the Premiership with legal action if it did not ensure that rival broadcasters were given a slice of live TV matches. Now, Sky is able to bid for all six Premiership rights packages - but can be awarded only five.

We are now seeing the emergence of a more open market. Alongside Setanta, Virgin Media, Five, the BBC - even ailing ITV - are all back in the bidding game. Top-flight football - and its viewers - will be the winners.

JohnC.

People aren't very happy about it on a UK board I frequent. There's the aspect of possibly paying an extra subscription to get Setanta. And there is actually more anger over the ITV part of the deal, with people angry that they got it after the whole ITV Sports fiasco which damaged a lot of clubs. But that's a discussion for another place.

Drag00n79

fta keith wrote:

... as this section has appeared to state that from next season there will be only 12 3pm saturday Eng Prem games live on Setanta Sports Ireland

There will be no live Premiership matches on Setanta Ireland when the new deal kicks in. They will be shown on Setanta 1. (I read that on an online paper yesterday but can't find the source now ).

Mossy Monk

Shamrok wrote:

There will be no live Premiership matches on Setanta Ireland when the new deal kicks in. They will be shown on Setanta 1.

Does this include the thirty Saturday 3pm games?

channelsurfer

actually hate to correct ya but there will be 12 3pm premiership matches next year on setanta ireland the rest will be on setanta 1 and 2 according to setantas own flier I got in the irish indo.

fta keith

Look at all this football that is completely FTA on Digital Satellite and Terrestrial in the next 10 days:

Tonight
UEFA Cup
6pm Bayer Leverkusan v Oasuna ITV4
8pm Ak aklmar v Werder Bremen ITV4
745pm Seville v Spurs ITV1/TV3

Tuesday
745pm Valencia v Chelsea ITV4
Man Utd v roma ITV1

Wednesday
745pm Bayern Munich v AC Milan RTE2

Next Thursday
7.45pm Spurs v Seville ITV1/ TV3
Werder Bremen v Ak Aklmar ITV4

Saturday Week
3pm Man City v Liverpool RTE2
5.30pm Man Utd v Watford BBC1

Mossy Monk

That has absolutely nothing to do with this thread. Reported.

watty

fta keith wrote:

Look at all this football that is completely FTA on Digital

Banned from Broadcasting for consistently making irrelevant comments/posts.

PM me after a week...

DMC

STV are not showing the FA Cup at all... and if memory serves me correctly, they didn't show England V Germany the other week.

Scottish fans to miss out on ITV coverage of English FA Cup
Ewan Murray
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday December 2 2008 16.09 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/02/fa-cup-scotland-itv

Scottish football fans will be denied the opportunity to watch the English FA Cup on ITV this season.

The Guardian has learned that Scottish Television, which holds both ITV broadcasting franchises in Scotland, has told the ITV network they wish to opt out of the FA Cup coverage, which was secured in a joint £425m deal with Setanta in March last year.

Under the terms of the deal ITV1 will broadcast live coverage of 16 FA Cup games a season. The FA Cup final will be broadcast live on ITV1 while the contract also includes highlights of all weekend and midweek FA Cup matches.

STV claimed the slots earmarked for live FA Cup football offer a perfect opportunity to showcase locally produced output, such as Scottish drama.

However, sceptics believe the FA Cup snub is part of the wider dispute between STV and ITV plc over how much the Scottish broadcaster pays for network programmes such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

Deciding not to screen programmers made by ITV plc subsidiary ITV Productions, such as the FA Cup, is likely to mean STV will seek to reduce what it pays the UK broadcaster for network programming by a seven-figure annual sum.

There has recently been a very public war of words between STV and the ITV chairman, Michael Grade, about which body subsidises the other.

It remains unclear whether STV will revise their position for the subsequent three years of the FA Cup contract. The company could even do that this season - for example in advance of the final - if there was suitable public outcry.

FA Cup matches traditionally rated highly in Scotland, sometimes disproportionately so, when shown by the BBC between 2001 and last season.

Scotland internationals including Manchester United's Darren Fletcher and Sunderland's Craig Gordon are likely to play in the competition.

STV's flagship domestic football programme, Scotsport, broadcast the last show of a 51-year history in May after the BBC won a five-year highlights deal for the Scottish Premier League.

channelsurfer

any idea if setanta are showing a 3pm saturday game in ireland???

Widescreen

channelsurfer wrote: »

any idea if setanta are showing a 3pm saturday game in ireland???

Blackburn v Liverpool, Sat 6th Dec 3pm Setanta Sports 1.

channelsurfer

sorry should have clarified... I meant an fa cup game on saturday january 3rd at 3pm..for sentanta ireland only??????

DMC

I've not seen or heard if they are. The Saturday 3pm game is a fixure of their Premier League deal, the FA Cup is a different contract.

DMC

After Setanta's reported woes with the new Premier League deal, now they and ITV want to approach the FA about the England/FA Cup deal..

Now this smells of ITV Digital mk.2.


Setanta and ITV to renegotiate sports rights deals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/03/setanta-and-itv-to-renegotiate-sports-rights
Owen Gibson
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 March 2009 13.15 GMT

ITV is in talks to restructure the repayments on all of its major sports rights deals, including its £275m contract to screen the FA Cup and England home internationals, in response to unprecedented economic pressures.

Meanwhile, it is understood that troubled Irish pay-TV broadcaster Setanta has already deferred one payment of £10m as it seeks to renegotiate its own £150m four-year contract with the FA and its other rights deals, raising further concerns about its future within the sports that it helped to bankroll.

It has emerged that both broadcasters are to approach all of their sports rights partners in an effort to renegotiate their contracts in light of the different economic pressures they are facing.

ITV is hoping to "smooth" the payment schedules for its major rights deals ahead of tomorrow's 2008 annual results announcement, which is expected to show the scale of the challenge facing the broadcaster as a result of the global economic slump and structural pressures.

As well as the £275m deal with the FA, which began this season and runs for four years, ITV last year paid £160m to renew its contract with Uefa for live Champions League football and shares the rights to the next two football World Cups and the next European Championships with the BBC.

Payments for sports rights contracts are generally front loaded, partly as a response to the ITV Digital collapse in 2002 that left dozens of Football League clubs on the verge of bankruptcy, and partly because sporting bodies have been able to dictate terms in recent years.

But ITV will argue that in every other area of its business, costs are more closely related to outgoings. The production costs of major dramas, for example, are only entered onto the balance sheet when they are broadcast.

The broadcaster hopes to spread out its sports rights payments more evenly, so they are more closely aligned to revenues brought in through advertising and sponsorship.

ITV insiders are keen to differentiate its predicament from that of Setanta, insisting that the FA remains a valued a partner and pointing out that its contract with the organisation is completely separate from that of the Irish pay-TV broadcaster.

In Setanta's case, the surprise loss of 23 live Premier League matches per season from 2010 to BSkyB in the recent rights auction has led its shareholders to instigate a wide-ranging review as they calculate whether they can afford to continue backing a revised, cut-down business model.

It is believed that Setanta, which spent hundreds of millions on sports rights as it embarked on an ambitious attempt to take on Sky, is seeking talks with all of its rights partners. It is likely to suggest a range of measures, including restructuring its payment schedules and reducing its total costs.

Setanta will argue that sport has benefited from having a rival to Sky in the market, which has helped boost rights values in recent years, and will appeal for help in plotting a future with a redrawn business plan.

As well as the four-year FA deal, Setanta has contracts with the English Premier League and the Scottish Premier League in football, the Indian Premier League in cricket, the US PGA Tour in golf, and Premier Rugby, which represents to the top English rugby union clubs.

If questions start to emerge over the future of the £425m FA Cup deal with ITV and Setanta, hailed by former chief executive Brian Barwick as a masterstroke in boosting revenues by 42%, it will reignite speculation about his wisdom in freezing the BBC and Sky out of the bidding process in order to secure a big increase.

ITV has faced criticism of its FA Cup coverage this season, following a series of high profile errors culminating in many viewers missing the only goal of the game in a tie between Everton and Liverpool due to an erroneous commercial break.

ITV and Setanta both declined to comment on confidential contractual negotiations.

channelsurfer

it looks like for the sake of around 20million euro or so extra for the package that setanta (due to the likes of benchmark capital etc refusing to fork out) lost they have made the mistake of their life and will be in big trouble unless they revert to been a small scale player. I can hear Vic Wakeling in Sky giving a little chuckle.... alright then a very big chuckle cos he will have a free hand in bidding for any rights he wants now due to lack of competition again.

Pat Gleeson

Good, as far as I'm concerned. Setanta's coverage is alright, but the PQ is dreadful - akin to ITV. It's one of the few times where so-called competition is bad. While Sky had the majority of coverage, there was one sub to pay with two players there's one sub for each - more money. Setanta Hi-Def ?
I don't think so.

Say want you want to about Sky - their coverage is always superb - as it should be - seeing as we pay through the nose for it.

Mossy Monk

Regarding Setantas PQ for the FA Cup it isn't so bad to be fair as they show the Cup games on Setanta Ireland. ITV should never be allowed to bid for football again.

mike65

I know its not been much of a competition for a few years now and Setanta are not in as many homes as Sky but that shouldn't disguise ITVs kiss of death effect.

From Guardian

Questions about the decline in profile of the FA Cup are likely to get louder after new figures revealed average television audiences for the competition have dropped by more than a third.

This season has been the first of a four-year £425m deal agreed by the Football Association with Setanta and ITV, which was hailed by the then FA chief executive, Brian Barwick, for boosting revenues by 42% when it was signed in 2007.

But a series of production errors on ITV, combined with the ongoing travails of Setanta after it missed out on a crucial batch of Premier League rights and attempts by both broadcasters to restructure their contracts with the FA, have called the wisdom of the deal into question.

Official viewing figures show that the average audience for live matches across both broadcasters fell from 5.072m to 2.097m in the third round, from 3.7m to 2.1m in the fourth round and 3.7m to 1.8m in the fifth round, compared with 2007-08, the final year of the BBC and Sky's coverage.

Although a notable decline would be expected, because a greater proportion of games are shown on pay-TV under the existing deal and because Setanta is in fewer homes than Sky, the figures will provide more evidence for those who claim the FA Cup is losing its mass appeal.

FA executives are likely to be concerned about the downward trend. If ITV's average audiences are compared with the BBC's last season, there is still a sizeable drop. In the third round they fell from 6.2m to 4.4m, in the fourth from 4.5m to 4.1m and in the fifth from 4.6m to 4m.

ITV left itself open yesterday to further accusations of devaluing the FA Cup with a bizarre technology test. Viewers tuning in to ITV4+1 for the FA Cup Preview Show could find only a test card saying: "Sorry, for legal reasons we cannot broadcast the programme that was shown earlier on ITV4." The broadcaster said this was unconnected to its attempts to renegotiate payment terms on its FA Cup contract. Instead, claimed ITV, the programme was canned for "ongoing technical tests".