Commission Close To Deal With Premiership On Television Rights - 23/10/2005

The European Commission looks like it is close to a deal with the English Premiership on the auction of tv rights. The deal could preserve football's income position but make life more difficult for fans. The news of a likely deal followed a meeting between Nelie Kroes, the competition commissioner and Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premiership. It rather looks as if the Commission has backed down, although in fact it is hardly hostile to big business interests. All the brinkmanship, including threats of legal action, in part reflected a feeling in Brussels that the Premiership was not taking the Commission's powers seriously enough. The Commission, for its part, did not want to upset English football or its fans. It appears that the Premiership will agree to auction six packages of 23 matches with no one broadcaster having the rights to all the bundles of matches on offer. This could mean that fans will have to subscribe to more than one broadcaster if they are able to catch all the games available in what looks like being the most competitive auction for years. However, the Premiership would still be able to strike a near-exclusive arrangement with one broadcaster which could win the right to show 115 games, an amount that should still generate a high payment. In other words, the most likely outcome is a monopoly disguised as a duopoly. The BBC and Five have expressed interest while cable operator NTL has linked up with ITV to mount a challenge to the current BSkyB monopoly. The latest group to express an interest is sports channel operator Setanta which has linked up with the European venture capital group, Benchmark Capital. Benchmark has become the largest shareholding in Setanta, valuing it at more than £100m. What is clear is that there will no longer be the 50 per cent cap on BSkyB's share that other broadcasters have been lobbying for.