Fulham Catapulted Into £100 Million League

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In the 2000/01 season Fulham's annual turnover was £8.956m. With the incredible new domestic right TV deal Fulham will have moved to an annual turnover in the excess of £100 million! Prem clubs will see their turnover increase by around £30 million!

http://www.footballeconomy.com/content/fulham-football-club-1987-ltd-fulham-football-leisure-ltd

We were already one of the top 30 clubs in Europe by turnover but this will move us closer to the top 20.

The 20th-place club in 2013-14 are set to earn £15.5 million more than the £20.3 million Wolves took this season - so imagine what Fulham could make if they achieve another top 10 finish.

It is a mind boggling increase on the previous deal for domestic TV right and it will be interesting to see whether the oevrseas TV rights, which have been growing at a great rate, will see a similary big jump.

What are the implications for Fulham from such a massive boost in revenue for essentially doing nothing. Fulham is already a profitable club but a £30m increase means a jump in turonver at the club of around 40%. That surely makes all sorts of things possible?

Will we see a whole new approach to the wage structure now with much higher paid players coming to the club? Does this new deal make a the sale of Fulham an imminent possibility? Where might the club spend the new money? The Riverside dvelopment costs can be met at a stroke and maybe more infrastructure development will be forthcoming.

One thing is for sure; this new deal is so big that it will create another revolution in England's top division and Fulham as a club will be transformed by it.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/9329988/ESPN-lose-out-to-BT-in-bidding-for-Premier-League-broadcast-rights-in-3-billion-deal.html


ESPN lose out to BT in bidding for Premier League broadcast rights in £3 billion deal


The Premier League on Wednesday agreed a £3.018 billion three-year deal with Sky and BT to broadcast matches live into homes, pubs and clubs in the UK from the 2013-14 season – a 70 per cent increase on the previous deal.



Record money: Premier League broadcast rights are worth £3.018 billion Photo: PA



By Matt Scott

10:12PM BST 13 Jun 2012

124 Comments


Leading clubs' annual incomes will grow by more than £30 million each, with player wages and transfer fees likely to soar, in a deal which reinforces the status of the Premier League as comfortably the world's richest domestic football competition and brings it into partnership with BT for the first time.

The staggering increase does not even account for any income from overseas, for which deals have yet to be struck. Indeed, including highlights income, principally from the BBC's Match of the Day, the League is already guaranteed to earn the same amount as over the previous three-year cycle before signing a single international deal.

"Given that I was surprised by what happened to the domestic rights I can see several chairmen saying 'you've got 70 per cent more on the domestic deals and we want the same from international'," the league's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, said.

Sky's £2.28 billion overall bid means it has to pay £6.6 million for each match to which it has the rights, a reflection of the threat posed to its business model were it to have lost the rights to Premier League matches.


BT will have access to some of the best matches available over the course of the season, with 18 "first picks" from a total of 38 available to both broadcasters, a slice Scudamore described as a "game changer".

This allows BT the first choice of matches from the fixtures list on almost half the match days. Sky will, however remain the dominant player, with a total of 115 matches, regaining control of the Saturday-evening fixtures which ESPN won in the last rights cycle.

ESPN will, after the 2012-13 season, have no presence in the UK for Premier League matches. Scudamore was keen to stress his hope that ESPN, which as a Disney-owned company has a strong global presence, will retain a relationship with the League with deals in overseas territories.

If similar growth is achieved in the overall value of overseas rights, the League stands to earn a total of £1.8 billion a year from broadcasting, almost 21/2 times more than they earned in the 2009-10 season.

The smaller clubs must hope that similar growth is realised from the overseas round, which is not due to be completed until at least the autumn, since that is shared more equally than the domestic pot.

Although the 20th-place club in 2013-14 are set to earn £15.5 million more than the £20.3 million Wolves took this season, the Premier League champions are set to take more than £72 million from domestic television revenues under the new deal. By contrast Manchester City received £41.8 million from that source this season.

In the event that overseas revenues keep pace with the rise in the domestic broadcasting rights, the 2013-14 Premier League champions will earn more than £100 million from broadcasting, still substantially less than the £130 million Real Madrid earned in 2011, but catching up.

It raises the prospect of the first £300,000-a-week footballer playing in England's top flight.

Scudamore hopes the new income will not all be poured into the pockets of players. "An element of this will allow clubs to invest in playing talent," he said. "But I hope a good degree of this will be used to develop stadium infrastructure and youth ­talent and to allow sustainability."

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/9333883/Fears-Premier-Leagues-record-broadcast-deal-will-create-well-funded-club-cartel-others-find-impossible-to-break.html

Fears Premier League's record broadcast deal will create well-funded club cartel others find impossible to break


Parliament will grill Premier League executives over how they intend to share their £3 billion broadcast bonanza with the rest of football amid Football League clubs' fears it could impair their chances of ever achieving promotion to the top flight.



Money matters: rich Premier League clubs will become even richer Photo: GETTY IMAGES



By Matt Scott

1:08PM BST 15 Jun 2012


Both Leagues, and the Football Association, must return to the House of Commons next month to provide feedback on the parliamentary select committee inquiry into football governance, giving MPs the opportunity to ask how the money will be spent. In previous visits, vaulting player-wage inflation has been a key area of concern for the committee.

Damian Collins MP, a leading member of the football select committee, told the Daily Telegraph: "You have to ask will it inflate agents' fees and wages for average English players? Will it lead to an increasing disparity between smaller and bigger clubs?

"Certainly something that should be looked at is the amount of money that goes to grassroots football. When we looked at it last year we found out English football spends less in percentage and even absolute terms on youth development than Germany, although we have richer leagues. Youth development should be looked at now they have got such a generous deal from broadcasting."

Certainly there is a belief among Championship clubs that the new deal could entrench the disparity between natural second-tier clubs and those relegated from the top flight.

The astonishing growth in the value of domestic broadcast rights, from £1.7 billion in the current three-year cycle to £3.018 billion for the three years from the 2013-14 season, has led many to speculate that the overall Premier League income could rise beyond £5 billion once its international broadcast contracts are concluded.

The Premier League hands over £400 million of its current £3.3 billion three-year broadcast incomes to Football League clubs. The bulk of that flows to the relegated clubs in "parachute" payments worth £48 million over four years. It means that in each of the first two years following relegation clubs receive £16 million from the Premier League.

If the growth in overseas revenues keeps pace with what was achieved in the domestic deals that could mean relegated clubs receiving £27.2 million in broadcast revenues alone, whereas the rest of the Championship clubs' "solidarity" payments would rise from the current £2.2 million a year to only £3.74 million.

With Championship clubs' turnover currently averaging £17.625 million a year, it has led to real fears that the new Premier League tv deal could have a distortive effect on their competition, creating a well-funded cartel of 23 clubs that others find impossible to break.

Indeed, with the well intentioned financial fair play rules soon to take effect, there are fears it could create a straitjacket for poorer clubs unable to compete with their better-funded, relegated rivals.

One influential figure said: "There will inevitably be an expectation from Football League clubs that we'll receive a bigger solidarity payment next time around. Let's assume the Premier League overseas income doubles the overall value of their TV deal and it is roughly divided up the same as it is now. That would give relegated clubs £96 million. The gap gets ever wider."

The Football League is already indirectly supporting the value of Premier League broadcast revenues. Its own television-rights deal with Sky, which begins next year, has seen incomes fall 26 per cent, from £88 million to £65 million a year, and Sky's own chief executive admits that in order to fund its £2.28 billion bid for 115 Premier League matches each year from the 2013-14 season, it had made economies in its other rights acquisitions.

Jeremy Darroch said: "Whilst the cost is higher, we have capacity for this increase through the combination of excellent work on cost efficiency across the business and choices over other future spending. As a result, we remain confident of delivering our financial plans, in line with our expectations, unchanged, in each year of the new deal."

Sky's share price tumbled eight per cent in early trading yesterday before recovering to end 3.55 per cent down on the day's trading.

ESPN, which holds the rights to one of six packages of Premier League matches next season, under the current rights cycle, but will lose it to BT from 2013-14, perhaps has more wounds to lick.

Its core offering has been its Premier League football and it remains focused on delivering that next season. But analysts might question the viability of ESPN's presence in the UK - it is a Disney-owned US firm - once that season is fulfilled.

That could have a knock-on effect for both the FA, for whom ESPN is the rights partner on FA Cup, England Under-21 and Women's Super League matches, and the Scottish Premier League, whose broadcast deal with ESPN runs until the 2016-17 season.

A spokesman for ESPN refused to comment.

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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/paulkelso/100025199/premier-league-players-immune-from-shareholder-springafter-3bn-tv-deal/


Premier League players immune from 'Shareholder Spring'after £3bn TV deal



By Paul Kelso


Last updated: June 14th, 2012

2 Comments

It is a rare day indeed that Sir Martin Sorrell passes up the opportunity to offer his wisdom to the nation. But after 60% of shareholders objected to a pay package worth £6.8m yesterday, the chief executive of advertising giant WPP was unusually unavailable for comment.

While the Sage of Adland gathers his thoughts before returning to the airwaves, he might ponder his misfortune in choosing advertising over football. Sorrell may be the latest victim of the 'Shareholder Spring', but pay restraint is not something that Premier League footballers are going to have to worry about in the near future.

While Sorrell was licking his wounds on Wednesday an equally high-profile chief executive, Richard Scudamore of the Premier League, was announcing a new media rights deal that defied the wider economic trends and all expectations, even Scudamore's.

The deal is worth £3.018bn over three years, a staggering 71% increase on the current £1.78bn domestic contract, and introduces a new player into the sports broadcast market in BT.

The implications of the deal are numerous, but one unavoidable certainty is that the biggest winners will be the players. Since the advent of the Premier League in 1992, when the first Sky deal was worth £304m, one tenth of that announced yesterday, the lions' share of every TV deal has gone in players' wages.

Annual player salaries on a par with the £6.8m rejected by WPP's shareholders are not unusual in the Premier League. By the time the new TV deal begins in 2013-14 they could be common.

Market-leading wages have been the key driver in attracting the best global talent to England and it would be delusional to expect that to change now. With the value of international rights set to increase too it is entirely possible that clubs will be sharing in excess of £1.5bn, and possibly as much as £2bn-a-season in broadcast income alone.

The average wage of a Premier League footballer is about £1.2m. Add 70% and a £2m average is likely. At the top end the £10m barrier, never mind £7m, will be routinely broken.

Total spending on wages by Premier League clubs in 2010-11 was more than £1.4bn. We can expect it to be more than £2bn by 2015.

A deal so far in excess of straitened economic norms is testament to the negotiating brilliance and commercial vision of Scudamore and his team. They have repeated the trick of ensuring there was enough genuine competition for rights that Sky had little choice but to massively increase its investment.

But it is also a challenge to Scudamore's ability to persuade his clubs to spend the windfall wisely. With huge income come questions of responsibility, and it is not obvious that football will provide the right answers.

Scudamore referred to this yesterday, expressing a desire that significant amounts be spent on youth development and "sustainability".

The gap between the wealth and success of the Premier League and the limitations of a national team that can draw on only 35% of its players were plain this week in Donetsk. Increased investment in home-grown players from the new deal must help close the gap.

The credentials and motivation of prospective Premier League owners will also require closer scrutiny now that the honey pot has got sweeter.

Unlike WPP, most clubs do not have shareholders to hold the executive to account, but they do have supporters. Whether chairmen will listen to their concerns remains to be seen.

A 71% increase is in stark contrast to the pay freezes and cuts many supporters are experiencing. Ticket prices have risen beyond inflation throughout the Premier League's 20 years. The result could be seen in the celebratory pictures of the stands at the Etihad on the final day of last season, where many of those present looked old enough to remember City's last title 44 years previously.

So a good question for every club chairman as the new season begins in August would be how they plan to repay the loyalty of supporters from the latest increase.

The answers would tell us whether the men in charge during this age of riches appreciate quite how lucky they are.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/9330918/Sky-and-BT-Premier-League-broadcast-deal-QandA.html


Sky and BT Premier League broadcast deal: Q&A


Where will the money go? How can I watch football on BT? All your questions answered...



By Matt Scott

7:40AM BST 14 Jun 2012

7 Comments


How can I watch football on BT?

BT already has a TV service delivered over broadband connections through a set-top box. It says it will also be launching a "football-focused" channel for its games and will aim to provide access from "as many platforms as possible". It will even entertain sub-contracting the rights back to Sky but BT will not be a benign bedfellow: it aims to use football to become the nation's predominant media presence.

Why did it cost so much?

Sergio Agüero settling the title in added time on the season's final day was a fine and timely marketing tool for the Premier League with its tender for broadcast rights about to open. There was (rather implausible) talk of a bid from the Qatar-owned news channel Al Jazeera, while Google and Apple were also linked. The League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, described this as helpful "competitive tension".

What does this mean for the Football League?

Under the present deal Football League clubs take £372 million from the total broadcast deal, the rump of which goes to clubs relegated from the top flight in 'parachute payments' worth £48 million over four years to each of them. That works out as £2.2 million each for the rest of the Championship clubs.

With Premier League domestic-broadcast income rising around 73 per cent, can the Football League expect a commensurate rise?

"I don't want to get drawn on that," Scudamore told The Daily Telegraph. "That's for the 20 clubs to decide. But there's always a line of people around the block outside Gloucester Place looking for their share."

Will ticket prices fall?

No one knows yet, but it may not be the clubs' top priority.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jun/13/premier-league-tv-deal-bt-sky


High-fiving at bloated new Premier League TV deal would be a mistake


Richard Scudamore may be delighted by the £3bn contract for the period 2013 to 2016, but most of it is likely to be swallowed up by players and their agents



David Conn

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 22.44 BST

Comments (54)



Richard Scudamore gets a bonus for overseeing television deals such as the £3bn one recently agreed by the Premier League. Photograph: Garrige Ho/Action Images


Before gasping at the dazzling lucre of the Premier League's £3bn TV contract from 2013 to 2016, and high-fiving the league's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, it is important to understand what the deal actually represents. Of course, as Scudamore himself beamed when announcing it, this does reward football's transfixing appeal, the jackpot arriving a month after the extraordinary finish to the Premier League's 20th season. This money is 10 times the £305m first TV deal struck by the breakaway league, over five years from 1992, which at the time was itself a whole new ball game.

The £3bn is vast for the clubs, their owners, the players – whose wages currently swallow around 70% of the clubs' total earnings – and their agents. Yet it is not coming from the generosity of Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB and ambitious BT, as a wide-eyed endorsement of the entertainment served up by the 20 clubs. As Mohamed Al Fayed, the Fulham owner, memorably grumbled, BSkyB are the ones who go off and make a huge profit themselves.

The Premier League's global appeal has attracted overseas owners into clubs, particularly the American buyers of Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, but the sure-to-be lucrative auction of world rights is yet to come. This £3bn windfall, which looks so glittering in a Britain double-dipped into recession, is for a more homespun business: selling TV subscriptions in Britain, to pubs desperate for regulars, and folk at home.

Sky struggled desperately for a viable audience before seizing the football rights from ITV in 1992, keeping live top-flight football off terrestrial TV ever since. BSkyB, and Murdoch's News International, recovered from near financial collapse, and built their commercial and political power, largely based on owning live football. Of all the 20 years that were reminisced last season, Wayne Rooney's greatest goal, Eric Cantona's most regal celebration, all the thrilling players and dramas, not one moment has ever been available, live on TV, to the thumping majority of British people who still do not subscribe to Sky. In the year to June 30 2011, BSkyB racked up income, overwhelmingly from their 10m subscribers, of £6.6bn, making pre-tax profit of £1bn. James Murdoch, then still the chairman and heir designate to his father's all-powerful media empire, glowingly increased shareholder dividends by 20%, paying them £253m.

This is a great deal of money flowing from the direct debits of struggling pubs and supporters of the national sport, to BSkyB, then to Scudamore and his clubs, then to players banking their fortunes. The record £3bn commitment from BSkyB and BT is a statement of utter confidence that their tills will ring from subscribers for three more years. It is odd to see this deal landing in the middle of the Leveson and phone-hacking inquisitions that have been so excruciating for the Murdochs. The Premier League, source of BSkyB's commercial strength, sold football to the company again.

Yet while BSkyB has made its owners hugely rich, the clubs themselves have mostly struggled just to break even throughout their 20-year bonanza. In 2010-11, eight of the 20 clubs made a profit while 12 – 60% – recorded losses. Principally that is because players – "the product," as their more blunt-speaking agents describe them – have ensured their wages escalate with every swelling of the TV pot.

Scudamore glowed yesterday that the "security" of the £3bn "will enable our clubs to ... plan sustainably for the foreseeable future." However, not many of them, squeezed by the competition to stay in the golden league and succeed, have managed ever to do that. Once Chris Sutton's £10,000 a week contract at Blackburn in the mid-1990s blew minds, so one day Carlos Tevez's £200,000 a week, £10m a year may also appear quaint.

The owners nevertheless, particularly those, like the Americans, motivated by making gains for themselves – the Glazers are reported to be considering the US for a United float – will be thrilled with this. Uefa's financial fair play break-even rule are what Europe's governing body came up with when it decided a players' salary cap would be impossible to enforce, and the clubs hope its introduction, from 2014, might finally dampen wages down.

The boom in TV money has not made it cheaper to attend matches over 20 years; quite the opposite, top flight ticket prices have increased by up to 1,100%. Now, in the recession, they are plateauing, but even this huge deal is unlikely to bring prices down much. The Premier League points for vindication to the quality of football, investment in stadiums, and money trickled lower down – 8.75% of its total income in 2010-11 – excluding parachute payments to its own relegated clubs, which many in football believe remains relatively pitiful.

It remains the case, though, that the national game, which could be attended live very cheaply before 1992, and watched live on TV free-to-air, has based its fortunes since on vastly inflating ticket prices, and selling itself live exclusively to pay TV. For overseeing it all, Scudamore, who is on a personal bonus for TV deals, will be cheered, garlanded all the way to the bank.

[White Noise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/13/premier-league-tv-rights-3-billion-sky-bt?intcmp=239


Premier League lands £3bn TV rights bonanza from Sky and BT


New entrant BT to launch sports channel, as Premier League hails 71% income boost from live TV rights auction


Owen Gibson

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 19.30 BST

Comments (291)



Manchester City finishing top of the league made for an exciting climax that helped fuel bidding war. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images


The landscape of British broadcasting has shifted dramatically after BT bought a large slice of televised football rights, boosting the Premier League's next TV deal to a record £3bn over three years, a 71% increase.

This equates to at least £14m more per year for each football club, with the bottom team in the league from 2013-14 onwards likely to receive more than the £60.6m Manchester City earned this year for ending the season as champions. Each individual televised match will now cost the broadcasters £6.6m, up from £4.7m under the previous deal.

BSkyB, which has built its business over 20 years on the back of live top flight football, retained most of the rights, securing 116 matches per season from 2013-14 in exchange for £2.3bn over three years.

But BT sprung a huge surprise by winning the rights to 38 games, including almost half the "first pick" games on offer, in exchange for £738m over three years. Richard Scudamore, Premier League chief executive, said BT's securing 18 of the 38 coveted "first pick" matches would be a "game changer". "[BT chief executive] Ian Livingstone and his colleagues have hugely ambitious plans. They have not invested in all this fibre [optic cable] for nothing, they want to establish a direct relationship with consumers," he said.

BT – the latest challenger to Sky after Setanta and ESPN – is expected to launch a new sports channel, available on a variety of platforms. But BT will use the rights to push its high speed broadband service. Its matches will be shown at Saturday lunchtime and on midweek evenings.

Against a grim economic backdrop elsewhere, Scudamore admitted he was "surprised" by the huge hike in income, which he said would allow clubs to continue to compete with their European rivals.

The huge increase in income is good news for club owners, players, their agents and luxury car dealerships and, on the evidence of previous deals, is likely to lead to another sharp rise in transfer fees. But despite the unprecedented riches that have flowed into the coffers of top flight clubs during the Premier League era, clubs made losses of £361m last year despite record income of £2.3bn.

Scudamore pleaded with clubs not to simply use the new deal to rack up losses and fuel wage inflation. While he said he wanted clubs to still invest in the best talent, he also made a plea to invest in infrastructure and youth development.

"We are entering a new era with financial fair play [the new Europe-wide regulations of club spending], I'm hoping it will get invested in things other than playing talent. It should also be able to achieve sustainability," he said.

The effect on fans is more uncertain. BT and Sky may have to charge more to cover their huge investment. When asked whether clubs would use the windfall to subsidise ticket prices, Scudamore would say only that it "gives them more choices".

Tony Ball, the former BSkyB chief executive who helped fuel the company's growth in the mid-1990s, is a non-executive director on the BT board and is likely to have advised it on its bidding strategy. ESPN, the US giant that entered the market when Setanta went bust trying to compete with Sky, has now been frozen out.

Scudamore said the deal would give more certainty to his member clubs. "It allows people to plan and gives us a degree of financial security. I don't underestimate that. The idea you can plan with some certainty your revenues for next four years is a big thing."

He said that he hoped that clubs would use the windfall to plan prudently for the future and reduce their losses, reducing their reliance on benefactors. But history would suggest the majority will flow directly into the pockets of players.

"Priority number one is retain and attract top talent but there ought to be a way of doing that while achieving sustainability. Some of it ought to be used to reduce losses."

He added that the windfall would help clubs comply with new European regulations forcing them to break even.

The first TV deal of the Premier League era was worth £304m over five years. Under the new deal, clubs will be guaranteed £3bn from live rights, plus £180m from the BBC for Match of the Day.

Once internet rights and overseas sales, which brought in £1.4bn under the current deals, are taken into account, the total is likely to easily top £5bn over three years.

Scudamore refused to elaborate on other bidders but ESPN, the US sports giant that entered the market when Setanta went bust, and al-Jazeera are among those believed to have ratcheted up the price for Sky and BT.

Scudamore said the breakneck climax to the season, with the league title and relegation issues going to the wire, had helped fuel the appetite for the Premier League "product".

"I've been five times round this block and each time people say the bubble has burst. As long as we invest in the top talent, as long as we invest in compelling competitive football, as long as we have teams in the bottom three beating teams in the top three, we have a compellingly competitive competition."

[White Noise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/14/bskyb-shares-fall-on-tv-rights-deal?intcmp=239


BSkyB shares hit by cost of football TV rights 'blowout'


• Deal with Premier League 'way above forecasts'

• BT also sees value drop after buying matches


Rupert Neate

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 June 2012 21.47 BST



Fears that BSkyB overpaid for its Premier League deal sent shares tumbling. Photograph: David Jones/PA


More than £400m has beenwiped off the value of BSkyB after analysts warned that the company had spent too much on "blowout" TV rights for next year's Premier League.

Sky's shares, which had fallen by 8.2% at one point, closed down 3.5% to 671p. The collapse in the share price knocked £160m off the value of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation's 39% stake in the satellite broadcaster.

The decline in the shares came the day after Sky splashed out £2.3bn on securing the TV rights to 116 matches each season for three years from the start of the 2013-14 season.

Sky's shares have already lost a fifth of their value since News Corp dropped its bid to take over the whole of the company at the height of the phone-hacking scandal last summer.

BT, which made its first foray into live Premiership football by paying £738m for the rights to 38 games a season, also saw its shares suffer.

Shares in the telecoms company, which ousted ESPN as the second broadcaster of live Premier League action, closed down 7.4p to 201.7p.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank said Sky had paid much more than forecast: "The blowout rights inflation was way above our forecasts, but it's not a game changer for Sky's competitive position." UBS strategists said the deal came as a "negative surprise".

Each individual televised match will now cost the broadcaster £6.6m to televise, 40% more than under the previous deal. The deal means Premier League football is now by far the most expensive show on television, with even art house Hollywood movies costing less to produce.

Patrick Yau, an analyst at Peel Hunt, said the huge amount paid reflects "how important Premier League rights are to the Sky model". "Sky has become synonymous with coverage of the league, so to maintain its position, it was prepared to pay as much as it did," he said. Sky has held rights to the Premier League since its inception in 1992.

Ian Livingston, chief executive of BT, said the telecoms company's success in winning two of the seven packages on offer, would be a "game changer". Winning the rights to 18 of the 38 coveted "first pick" games means it will be able to broadcast some of the Premier League's most high profile games, such as the Manchester derby between United and City.

Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, said BT had won the rights to "top six v top six games" and had "secured highly attractive, highly compelling matches".

Scudamore said the deal would pump at least £14m more a year into each of the league's 20 football clubs. He said he hoped clubs would use some of the extra windfall on investment in "infrastructure, stadiums, youth development and the community". Previous broadcast deals have led to spikes in players' wages and transfer fees.

Steve Liechti, an analyst at Investec, said: "The cost is higher than expected, and BT arguably looks a more potent competitor than ESPN, even if we have some doubts over its content strategy and pay TV product performance to date."

It is thought that Sky won't pass on the extra costs to its 10m subscribers. A person close to the deal said Sky would pay for the price hike by cutting costs and spending less on other programmes. Yau estimated that Sky will need to save an extra £140m a year to pay for the extra cost of the rights.

BT admitted that its first foray into live Premiership football will knock £100m from its profits before tax and charges.

[Burt]

Long gone are the days of weeds in the Putney End, disappearing seats in the Riverside Stand, etc. etc...

[White Noise]

Forget the financial crisis - BT joins the Premier League party and football lands an incredible £3BILLION



By Charles Sale

PUBLISHED:17:29, 13 June 2012 | UPDATED:23:06, 13 June 2012

Comments (123)



The Premier League has secured its status as world football's richest competition with an astonishing £3.018billion deal for domestic TV rights for three years.

The agreements, which start from the 2013-14 campaign, are a remarkable 70 per cent increase on the current contract.

Long-term partners Sky will show 116 games a season - the maximum allowed for one station - and newcomers BT have gained a 38-game foothold.


Winners: BT have managed to secure some massive matches

The mind-boggling numbers mean the goldrush Premier League is being paid £6.5million for every one of their 154 live TV games per season at a time of austerity when the value of most TV  sports contracts are falling or only holding up.

The big losers are the devastated Walt Disney-owned ESPN, who were desperate to expand their one-package Premier League portfolio but have ended up with nothing.

This is due to surprise entrants BT being prepared to pay £738m over three years for the games that cannot be sold to Sky, who have forked out £2.28bn.


BT WILL LAUNCH NEW FOOTBALL CHANNEL

BT will launch a new 'football-based' channel to carry its 38 Premier League games from the 2013-14 season and could distribute it to 'other platforms' like Sky or Virgin.

The company will release full details and pricing in 'due course', but non-BT customers could expect to pay around £10 per month.

Sky's 'Monday Night Football', an 8pm match, and 'Super Sunday', featuring 1.30pm and 4pm kick-offs, are unaffected.

But ESPN's absence means Sky also take over the Saturday 5.30pm kick-offs.


'It's down to the excitement of the  competition,' said Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, who can expect a healthy annual bonus from a grateful Premier League remuneration committee as a reward for his jackpot negotiating skills.

There must now be considerable doubts as to whether ESPN, who regarded Premier League property as crucial to their business plan, will continue with their UK operation once their  current contracts expire.

These include Premiership rugby and the FA Cup, giving the FA more worries about their broadcast partners — ESPN having taken over from the doomed Setanta.

Scudamore was surprised by the size of the offers, boosted by the ultimate drama of Manchester City clinching the title in injury time of the last game of the  season.

'We couldn't have gone to market at a better time,' he admitted.

Sky had been due to go to the market three months earlier but were delayed by the European red tape surrounding the Portsmouth landlady case, involving pub  football screening via a Greek TV decoder.

But it was widely expected that Sky, who have shown the Premier League for the 20 years since its inception, would retain the lionshare of the packages.

Yet Rupert Murdoch's satellite company have had to pay the whopping £2.28bn — a premium of around 40 per cent —to keep their dominant position as the main broadcaster of Premier League football.


Excitement: The drama of last season influenced the huge price

Sky were very concerned that money-no-object Middle East network Al Jazeera would be their major competition, so had to bid big accordingly.

It is still not clear — and the PL cleverly encouraged uncertainty — as to whether Al Jazeera, who have been preoccupied setting up their French football operation, even put in a bid. But Al Jazeera are sure to be at the PL rights table next time around, giving the clubs the expectation of another bonanza.


HOW FOOTBALL GOT RICH


The cost of showing a Premier League game in the UK — £6.53m in 2013 — will be 10 times more than when it launched in 1992.

1992-1997: BSkyB, 60 games of the season, £190m — deal value is £633,000 per game

1997-2001: BSkyB, 60 games, £670m, £2.79m per game

2001-2004: BSkyB, 110 games, £1.2bn, £3.64m per game

2004-2007: BSkyB, 138 games, £1.024bn, £2.47m per game

2007-2010: BSkyB/Setanta, 138 games, £1.706bn, £4.12m per game

2010-2013: BSkyB/ESPN 138 games, £1.782bn, £4.3m per game

2013-2016: BSkyB/BT 154 games, £3.018bn, £6.53m per game

ESPN are understood to have competed strongly with BT through two rounds of bidding.

And Scudamore's team were able to extricate every possible penny from what were previously the least attractive match choices by the 'game changer' of including a total of 18 first picks in BT's set of 38 games to be shown on the Saturday 12.45pm slot and midweek and Bank Holidays.

This reformatting of the packages has resulted in the price for those 38 games rising from £2.3m-a-match to £6.5m - an increase of 260 per cent.

BT will be setting up a new football-based channel to drive business to their BT Vision station, which has 700,000 subscribers.

Scudamore said: 'We welcome BT as a new broadcast partner.

'They are a substantial British company that is at leading edge of technology. They will deliver new ways in which fans will be able to follow the competition.

'ESPN are great partners and will continue to be great partners. They will come again in three years time I'm sure.'

However, the American owners might well have given up on the UK market long before then.

ESPN spokesman Paul Melvin said: 'We made a strong bid that reflected the value of the rights to our business.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2158825/Premier-League-sell-TV-rights-3-billion-BT-Sky.html#ixzz1xrkTdUta

[AlFayedsChequebook]

Dear Sky subscribers,

Thank you.

[White Noise]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/have-bt-and-bskyb-bosses-scored-an-own-goal-over-football-rights-7852080.html


Have BT and BSkyB bosses scored an own goal over football rights?


Ian Livingston and Jeremy Darroch, once colleagues, are now going head to head after forking out £3bn for three-year TV football rights deals


Gideon Spanier


Friday 15 June 2012


The bosses of BT and BSkyB are not quite the Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger of the British media industry but they have been corporate rivals for almost as long those Premier League managers. Now Ian Livingston of BT and Sky's Jeremy Darroch – two former finance men who once worked together at electrical retailer Dixons – are going to compete against each other like never before.

In a move that stunned many in the TV industry, Mr Livingston has splashed out £738m for 38 Premier League football games a season in a three-year deal.

BT's entry into the football market for the first time, ousting previous incumbent ESPN, was surprising for two reasons. First, Mr Livingston forced Mr Darroch to fork out £2.28bn to keep hold of the rest of its rights for 116 games – up from £1.62bn in the last auction. Second, it showed that Mr Livingston was up for a fight by parking BT's tanks squarely on Sky's home turf of Premier League football.

The two companies have been encroaching into each other's territory for years. Sky made significant in-roads into the broadband and home phone market from 2006 while BT got involved in pay-TV with less success in the same year.

It is clear that Mr Livingston plans to change that, reckoning that an investment in premium football will finally pull in the punters. Despite having many millions of phone customers, BT has only 700,000 TV customers – against Sky's 10.3 million.

The City gave an initial thumbs down to the deal, with shares in Sky and BT tumbling on fears they overpaid. The £3bn total raised in the TV rights auction was up almost 70 per cent on the last deal.

Sky was the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 at one point yesterday, diving over 8 per cent, before easing back to close down 3.5 per cent. BT tumbled as much as 5 per cent but also ended down 3.5 per cent.

Analysts reckoned the companies face real challenges. Both are paying about £6.5m a game, compared to the £4.7m that Sky was spending previously. The broker Investec claimed that the result "looks mixed/negative" for Sky. "BT arguably looks a more potent competitor than ESPN, even if we have some doubts over its content strategy and pay TV product performance to date," Investec said.

There is arguably a bigger doubt hanging over BT, which doesn't have any track record in making TV programming. This is a big gamble by Mr Livingston, who will be acutely aware how ITV Digital and Setanta both lost many millions fighting in vain over football. ESPN, backed by Disney, has had to give up too.

Some in the City were unconvinced after BT's conference call with analysts, immediately after the auction result, when the telecoms firm admitted there would be a hit to profits – unlike Sky. "I think BT are overestimating their own capabilities and underestimating Sky's," said one source, who asked not to be named.

But Mr Livingston has spent heavily for 18 "top picks" a season, which gives it the right to show clashes involving top clubs such as Arsenal vs Manchester United. Investment bank Jefferies reckoned BT's investment would pay off.

Underlying all this is the fascinating personal relationship between Mr Livingston and Mr Darroch. They are similar ages and worked together at Dixons between 2000 and 2002. Mr Livingston, from Glasgow, had already been there for years, having been made finance director at the age of just 32.

So when Mr Darroch, who is older and hails from Northumerland, joined in 2000, he held the more junior role. Mr Livingston's departure for BT as finance director in 2002 opened the way for Mr Darroch to take over as FD at Dixons, before landing the same job at Sky in 2004.

Mr Darroch was made chief executive in 2007, six months before Mr Livingson at BT. Both still work together professionally from time to time as Sky uses some of BT's telecom services and BT sells some Sky channels.

There is a bigger picture here. Sky and BT are in a war with Virgin Media and others such as TalkTalk to win customers in the "triple play" market of pay-TV, broadband and phone. Virgin, the second biggest player in pay-TV, has 3.8 million customers but no exclusive football, so may be worried by BT's new move.

Both Sky and BT are promising to let their rival carry each other's football coverage. However, fans know prices will rise and the British Beer & Pub Association is urging them not to impose huge price increases for pubs.

The TV rights deal doesn't kick in until next August. It could be the most intriguing chapter in the overlapping careers of Messrs Darroch and Livingston.

Sky pulls strings: Its rivals flop

Sky has made a monkey of every rival that has tried to take it on in pay-TV football. ITV Digital failed spectacularly, going bust a decade ago. The only memorable aspect of its efforts was the comic puppet that was created for its marketing campaign.

The Irish firm Setanta came next, buying rights to 46 games from 2007, after Brussels ruled that Sky could not have a monopoly on TV football. It was a sorry experience for Setanta as it had to spend heavily against Sky, did not have the best pick of the games, and had a reputation for poor customer service.

Setanta's collapse in 2009 was an opportunistic moment for America's ESPN to scoop up rights. The Disney-owned broadcaster didn't make the mistake of trying to outdo Sky. Instead ESPN got Sky to supply live pictures and give other support.

But ESPN never got much traction. The Setanta legacy means it has only 23 games at present — not even a game a week — against Sky's 115. And with the latest rights proving so expensive, Disney has quit.

The latest entrant in the jungle, BT, will need to be at its smartest to cope with the gorilla that is Sky.

[White Noise]

sportingintelligence‏@sportingintel

When you add new domestic deal, expected uplift in foreign, MOTD, web rights etc, 3-yr total Prem rights 2013-16 could be towards to £6bn.

[CravenCottager]

No doubt this money will simply be swallowed up by the ever increasing salary packets demanded by players and likely in reducing our eye wateringly large debt to Mo. Doom, doom and gloom.

[zzamora]

Hang on a min...

They havent even announced the overseas rights yet, which we're worth 1.6 billion on their own last time.

Could be more like 2.8 billion this time.

Quids in.

[Burt]

Maybe they can lend me a tenner then.

[SG]

Overpaid prima donnas will soon become vastly overpaid prima donnas and their agents will continue to suck more money out of football as they take their 10% of the increased wage levels.

The smaller clubs will continue to struggle and the divide between them and us will be ever greater. Thank god & Mo we are the right side of this divide but it doesn't make it right.

[LBNo11]

Overpaid prima donnas will soon become vastly overpaid prima donnas and their agents will continue to suck more money out of football as they take their 10% of the increased wage levels.

The smaller clubs will continue to struggle and the divide between them and us will be ever greater. Thank god & Mo we are the right side of this divide but it doesn't make it right.

plus one

[BarryP]

It will be interesting to see what the overseas rights sell for.  I am doubtful the increase will be anywhere close to the 70% domestic increase but hey I have been wrong before.

[Scrumpy]

Overpaid prima donnas will soon become vastly overpaid prima donnas and their agents will continue to suck more money out of football as they take their 10% of the increased wage levels.

The smaller clubs will continue to struggle and the divide between them and us will be ever greater. Thank god & Mo we are the right side of this divide but it doesn't make it right.

+2