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Stuart Prebble the former chief executive of ITV Digital caused some amazement in the High Court on Friday when he claimed that the directors of Carlton and Granada did not know of, or formally approve this guarantee. He described the decision to include it in the formal bid document as ‘careless’.
No, No Mr Prebble, to drop a fiver on the floor and lose it on a night out is ‘careless’, to include a sentence in a document with the word ‘guarantee’ in it then to claim you know nothing about it is something far, far worse. Who are you suggesting included the guarantee? Maybe the tea lady on her morning rounds was at your desk when she saw the formal bid document and decided to include a sentence guaranteeing the sum of £315 million if the unthinkable happened. Then you just sealed the envelope without allowing anyone else to read it despite the suspicious presence of tea stains.
What Mr Prebble is suggesting is just plain nonsense. Of course they knew about it and they new exactly what it meant. If the Football League are to be believed then it was the presence of this ‘guarantee’ that had a significant bearing on the decision to award ITV Digital the contract in the first place.
I knew I’d have to use that word somewhere and here it is again ‘contract’. The problem for the Football League is that the guarantee was not included in the formal ‘short’ contract that was signed following their successful bid despite the fact that this omission caused disquiet among several chairmen of individual clubs.
In fact Clarets Mad reported in August 2001 that ‘it was not a question of will ITV Digital fail but when’ so if we knew something was wrong it does seem remarkable that they allowed the contract to be signed without this guarantee. ITV Digital continued to refuse to make the guarantee in the more detailed full contract and this was one of the reasons why this document still remained unsigned when the company went bust.
The case for Granada and Carlton is that the terms of the bid were ‘subject to contract’ whilst Mr Charles Flint QC for the Football League argues that the guarantee made in the bid was just that - a cast iron guarantee that there is no getting out of. The League claims it is owed £132 million for the remaining 2 years of the contract which represents the shortfall between what ITV Digital should have been paying and what Sky are actually going to pay now that they have the rights.
Given the fact that the outcome of the case could mean the difference between success and failure for so many clubs I'm surprised that more hasn't been reported about it so far but Clarets Mad will try and keep you up to date with what has been going on and we will be keeping a particular eye on the comments of Mr Prebble of Cloud Cuckoo Land.