UEFA to sell England TV rights
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| Platini turns wheeler dealer selling TV rights |
Yesterday the FA announced they have agreed a deal to allow UEFA to sell the TV rights for England games as part of a group deal involving all 53 UEFA members.
The deal, which is believed to be worth £100m over four years for the English FA, means that the TV rights for England games for Euro 2016 and the World Cup 2018 will be sold collectively with the rest of the UEFA members.
FA general secretary, Alex Horne, claims it is a creative solution and the deal is worth more than their current valuation and UEFA President Michel Platini said the collective bargaining is essential and will help develop national team football with all 53 UEFA members being guaranteed a fixed revenue.
There is very little information on exactly how this deal would work but it is something that is not uncommon in this country. The Premier League use this model of collective bargaining with the TV rights for live Premier League games being sold as package, ensuring a more even distribution of money throughout the league. Whereas in Italy and Spain teams sell their rights individually which often leads to the bigger and more popular clubs earning significantly more in TV revenue, distorting competition in the leagues.
How this transcends into International football or what the benefits are I’m not too sure, maybe the likes of Luxemburg and San Marino will now have the funds to develop their infrastructure, whether this will happen in practice I’m not convinced.
The biggest question for England fans (if we qualify for the Euro 2016 and World Cup 2018) will be who will UEFA sell the rights too and will this mean the end of the games being protected by the Queen as part of the sporting crown jewels that should be available on free to air channels?
Sky TV have already questioned the validity of this recently and were told that World Cup and European Championship games can and will remain as part of the protected Crown jewels, however with UEFA now selling the rights collectively it is highly likely that Sky or another pay TV channel from abroad will buy the rights and then sell them on domestically.
I feel this is the end of England games in major tournaments being show on free to air TV, but who knows 2016 is a long way away and maybe, just maybe they will still be protected and maybe we will all be travelling to work on jetpacks!!
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