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Over the summer the fans were asked to join in the fight against ITV by boycotting the companies programmes and demonstrating outside its offices. The fans that did so were no doubt people of principle for whom the game still mattered over money and personal benefit. Sadly, it seems that supporters are the only people left in football with any honour at all.
In a move that is certain to anger many fans it has been reported that the Football League has agreed a £5million 2 year deal with ITV for them to show highlights from matches involving the 72 league clubs. The League will receive £3 million up front but that is money it was expecting anyway from the liquidators of ITV Digital and then £1 million a year for the next 2 seasons. It is also believed that Granada and Carlton will no longer insist that the League pays its legal costs arising out of this summer’s court case.
In this case the finger cannot be solely pointed at the Football League as it allowed its clubs executives a free vote on whether to accept the deal or to go for a lesser joint bid from the BBC and Channel 5. Not only did over half of all clubs vote for the ITV deal but over half of the ones most hurt in the First Division did so also. Presumably given our seemingly lone stand in banning ITV cameras from Turf Moor Burnley were one of the ones voting against it.
So it’s the clubs fault? Well not quite, because in it’s haste to sell it’s live matches to Sky (a deal that the clubs were not consulted over) in the aftermath of the ITV Digital contract fiasco the Football League managed to agree that the highlights package was virtually worthless.
They agreed to let Sky stipulate that no highlights show would be over 30 minutes long, the goals could not be shown before they had been shown on Sky and they could not be show at the same time that Sky is showing any kind of live football.
I’m sure these restrictions led to the value of the deal being so low and we could have hardly expected the poor old BBC to find the money. Yes the same ‘poor’ public broadcasters who reportedly found over £500,000 to show Manchester United’s 2 Champions League qualifying matches and who will be pouring £10 million of our money into Hollywood bank accounts for the rights to show the Harry Potter movie on Christmas Day 2003.
The Football League highlights might have been made less attractive to them but I would like to know how the BBC thought that it was a worse use of licence payers money than the above examples.
Money is not so much talking as shouting its head off at the moment and with many clubs desperate for cash they obviously thought that it was better to get a few more quid in the bank than take a stand on any principles they might have.
It is thought that Burnley will receive £88,000 from the deal in the not too distant future representing our share of the £3 million down payment. This comes on top of what is thought to be a similar sum from the recently renegotiated NTL official websites deal. The down side of the NTL deal is that Burnley will no longer be getting a guaranteed £500,000 over the next 3 years but will instead be taking a greater share of the profits from its official website, a sum which will be considerably less.
It is difficult to gauge what the reaction of fans will be to the new TV deal. I for one am not surprised by it and any anger I feel is tempered to a certain degree by the fact that the money might well be enough to stave off any threat of the Clarets going into administration this season.
Whilst I am obviously happy about this it has all been a thoroughly shabby affair and a revelation, if it were needed, that incompetents run our game.
It will undoubtedly go down as the most disgraceful affair in the 114 year history of the Football League.