by Seal »
19 Jan 2010 13:39
Dirk Gently Comfortably Numb I still can't understand why in today's media age the football clubs cannot sell their own rights to their own home games to whoever they like.
From a market point-of-view (and a customer one) the value of each asset should be on the market to the highest bidder.
The League is a Trust in the economic sense and it bends to market to its own end. It restricts free trading and competition, it is a cartel.
It dominates a market and causes these anti-competitive practices that entrench its dominant position.
In each league each team sells their home rights, and therefore each "richer" (or "poorer") club would visit twice, this would provide (of all things) a level playing field.
They could, and the EU wanted them to - there was a typical political "fudge" by forcing competition in broadcasters and not allowing the collective rights to be sold to just one (Sky).
But the clubs do recognise, to their credit, that collective selling is in the interests of the league as a whole and them individually. You'd have the Big 4 selling their rights for vast sums, and the Burnleys and Boltons getting peanuts. The gap between the Big 4 and the rest would get so big so quickly that the league would pretty much collapse (or at least turn into what they have in Scotland, with 4 not 2 clubs), and so the rights of the Big 4 would decrease in value as well if that happened. They do recognise the need for some opposition, and they're happy with the financial advantage that prize money and CL moneys gives them over the others - so they are happy to subsidise the other clubs in the league.
Exactly. Barca & Real sell their own media rights, and it helps accentuate the gap between them and the rest.
The Premier League formed as a 'collective' and sells its rights as one. From a pure revenue perspective Man U would love to sell their rights separately, but it goes against the whole Premier League model that they signed up to (and have hugely benefited from).
As for this whole SKY issue, it is very interesting, and the big question is indeed the knock on effect to the clubs in terms of the revenue their receive from TV rights. The club accountants will probably be more worried than SKY's.
However, it's hard to say what the exact effect will be. The current PL TV deal runs to 2012, and there will still be some form of 'bidding war' for the TV rights, regardless of the price one is forced to sell them onto rivals at, which may keep the total revenue the PL receives in line with existing deals. It would however appear that the never ending rise in deal value is over.
