Brussels meddlers will ruin the Premiership
The Barclays Premiership is widely regarded as the best football league in the world.
A key ingredient of the Premier League’s success has been its ability to attract the top players. Top stars cost big bucks, and the money that the media companies have pumped in has helped the clubs to compete in the market for talent. When it comes to televised British football, broadcasters don’t come bigger than BSkyB. It has used the public’s thirst for live football to drive subscriber numbers. Sky expects to have 10m subscribers by 2010 and thinks that 80 per cent of all British households will have paid television in 15 years’ time.
Understandably, Sky is very keen to hold on to its football monopoly for as long as possible. And, given its market dominance, Rupert Murdoch’s outfit has the financial firepower to outbid most other broadcasters. But our friends over at the European Commission have a different view of free-market economics and of the way in which football media rights should be divided. In 2003, Sky secured an exclusive deal on broadcasting rights with the Premier League, for just over £1bn. It would appear that the Commission wasn’t very happy with that, and their displeasure has been bubbling away for the past few years. The Premier League is working out how the broadcasting rights from 2007 until 2010 will be allocated, with the bureaucrats in Brussels seemingly reluctant to let Sky’s dominance continue.
The Commission appears to be backing away from some of its initial statements , which suggested that no broadcaster would be allowed to own the rights to more than 50 per cent of live games. But it remains determined to ensure that “at least two broadcasters each obtain a viable and meaningful share of live broadcasts”. Like many occasions when the Commission decides to interfere, it’s not entirely clear who they are trying to protect. Football fans are able to see many more games than before, at good value for money, especially when compared with the expense of going to a live game.
In the long term, it could be football that pays the price of the commission’s intervention. If Sky’s broadcasting allowance were dramatically reduced, it would probably lose subscribers. That would cut the money Sky would be willing to pump into the game, and less cash would be available to develop teams and attract the big names. Perhaps this is the Commission’s real aim: to help other European leagues to compete with the quality and style of the Premiership.