by Seal »
07 Oct 2009 08:55
AthleticoSpizz The broadcasting rights are held with the Ukranian FA and you can't blame them for accepting the highest bid for the rights for what was, in a broadcasting terms, their most lucrative fixture. Hardly their fault that Setanta also had their heads up their collective arses when it came to bidding way over the top for said broadcasting rights, a figure that no other broadcaster in their right minds would match.
Sadly, I think this could be a taste of things to come as far as broadcasting live football is concerned and for that reason, a very sad day.
Exactly, this is nothing to do with the FA or indeed the government!
As Athletico says, the FA only control England HOME games. Away games are controlled by the respective football associations of whichever country is hosting the game, in this case Ukraine.
Many of the smaller national governing bodies do not have the resources to sell these rights themselves, therefore they out source it to a third party such as Kentaro, Sport Five or IMG. In this case it was Kentaro, and it is their job to manage the process, and in essence sell the rights to the highest bidder. This is particularly important in the case of England matches, as generally they attract the highest rights fees due to the competitiveness and demand of our TV market.
The only reason that ITV and BBC always used to show away games was because they were the only channels. Since the advent of subscription channels, away games have often been on SKY. The unique circumstances in this case are that this is the first time a broadcaster holding the rights has folded, hence the issue has suddenly come into national conscience.
There is nothing the Government can do to protect these rights (unlike Wimbledon, the Olympics and World Cup for example). The only thing they could do is buy the rights themselves, and then hand them over to a free to air channel, which I’m not convinced would be the best use of tax payers’ money...
In terms of the future...there is nothing to stop a website bidding for the rights in the future. However, it would take a huge cheque for them to outbid say SKY or ESPN for an Englang game that actually mattered, therefore it remains pretty unlikley that we'll see an event like this again anytime soon.
