MARTIN SAMUEL: The £900m TV problem Jurgen Klopp refuses to see

Published on: 23 November 2020

Here is the problem. It is called Package A. And it is worth £900million.

That was the price, ball park, paid by BT Sport in the last domestic rights negotiations for 32 Premier League games each season, kicking off at 12.30pm on a Saturday.

It was a hard-fought bidding war with Sky and the contract runs until the end of the 2021-22 campaign. And, no, Covid-19 and a truncated season were not envisaged when pen went to paper. But that doesn’t make the contract invalid.

All clubs agreed to the sale —even those, like Liverpool, who may have suspected they would have Wednesday night commitments in Europe. So while much of what Jurgen Klopp said about kick-off times makes perfect sense, one question has not been answered.

Where’s the money?

For if BT Sport are to sacrifice Package A for the remainder of the 2020-21 season — broadcast rights which they bought in good faith — it would appear they are owed roughly £300m.

Split 20 ways, that’s £15m per club, always providing the broadcasters don’t consider it a contractual breach and sue for a rebate on next year as well. In which case, double it.

Yet managers never talk about this rather significant complication. Klopp spoke after the win over Leicester as if this was television’s decision to make. It isn’t. It’s football’s. They sell these packages, seven of them, and invite tenders. Highest wins. And the guys at the very top of the game — the owners, not the employees — cannot believe the revenue football is generating.

That’s why they’re here. You don’t notice American venture capitalists, Russian oligarchs and sovereign wealth funds hanging around other sports, do you? They follow the money.

And English football money is off the charts. Why? Because someone pays £900m, just for Package A.

So while it is very possible to have sympathy for Klopp because he is at the sharp end of serious injuries and aching legs, it is not merely — as he puts it — ‘a decision on a desk in an office’ to apply change.

That’s a glib interpretation of what is financing his industry. If he wants the broadcasters to understand a coach’s predicament, coaches need to understand theirs.

As it stands, football has sold television a product and that product is no longer working satisfactorily for football — so football expects television to come up with a solution.

Sorry, but that’s not how it works.

‘If you don’t start talking to BT then we’re all done,’ Klopp told Sky reporter Geoff Shreeves. ‘Sky and BT have to talk.’

Actually, they’re rivals. They negotiate on picks because they have to, but Sky are not in the business of easing BT Sport’s pain, and vice versa.

The company that BT Sport outbid for Package A was almost certainly Sky. It was Sky’s interest that would have pushed the selling price to £9.375m per match.

Think about that. To move just one fixture — say Brighton v Liverpool this weekend — could cost close on £10m in rebates. And that’s Liverpool’s bill, surely, because it’s not Brighton who are objecting.

Yes, compromises could have been made with foresight. Excluding clubs with European fixtures on Wednesday from Package A kick-offs could be a straightforward one. Yet the right time to do that would have been in 2018 when the deal was struck, but the clubs did not push for it. Why? Because it wouldn’t be worth £900m.

Any club in Europa League action is already excluded, because they play Thursday. Remove two of the four Champions League teams, too, and that wipes out the bulk of the interesting fixtures.

Take this weekend. Out of Package A contention would be Brighton v Liverpool, Manchester City v Burnley, Chelsea v Tottenham and Arsenal v Wolves. In other words, five of the big six.

The previous UEFA match week, such an arrangement would have ruled out half the programme including the games involving Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal.

There would have been one spicy fixture, Manchester City v Liverpool, but that would be bagged for Sunday afternoon. So the 12.30 Saturday options would have been — Brighton v Burnley, Southampton v Newcastle, Crystal Palace v Leeds and West Ham v Fulham. Some reasonable games in an open season, but who’s paying £900m?

Equally, TV people know their audiences. A marquee match at a less attractive kick-off time would also affect the selling price.

Klopp’s points are valid. Covid has complicated the world. Yet, for an intelligent man, it is disingenuous not to acknowledge football’s half of the bargain.

‘If someone tells me again about contracts, I’ll go really nuts,’ he told Shreeves, ‘because these contracts aren’t made for a Covid season. We all have to adapt. Everything’s changed but the contract with the broadcasters is still, “We have this, so we keep this”. What? Everything changed, the whole world changed.’

Indeed it did. Except the £900m. No mention of that changing, so one presumes football still expects and needs BT Sport to pay the full amount for Package A. Maybe that’s why it’s a broadcaster problem.

How to continue banking their money without delivering the product. That would be a problem for anybody.

Friendly fire from Hodgson

Like every other manager, or indeed rational person, Roy Hodgson questioned the need for the international friendly prior to last week’s Nations League matches.

Speaking as a former international coach, he said: ‘I’d like to think I’d have said we’d forgo the friendly.’

There is, however, no record of Hodgson (right) doing this as England manager. Terry Venables was the last in that position to arrange training camps rather than matches.

Maybe Gareth Southgate would have won more friends among club managers that way — although not among his employers, who need the broadcast revenue even more than the gate receipts.

Nationalism when it suits!

It is a strange beast, Irish nationalism. Certainly in a sporting context.

As Stephen Kenny, manager of the Republic of Ireland football team, was showing his players the motivational video that some found to be anti-English, Andy Farrell, English-born coach of Ireland’s rugby team, was preparing to name a starting XV that had five players originating from South Africa and New Zealand. Equally, one of the main gripes around the Ireland football team is that Declan Rice and Jack Grealish deserted them to play for England — the country of their birth.

So which is it? Is Irish nationalism about culture, history and pride, or is it a loose catalyst energy that is picked up and dropped when it suits, much like nationhood in sports teams?

The recruitment of Rice and Grealish was nothing more than an opportunist grab which backfired once those players reached maturity.

There is something rather dubious about trying to recruit teenagers from another country, when they are very much tied to their family’s cultural identity and have forged less of their own.

Equally, Ireland’s five foreign starters at Twickenham on Saturday all qualified on residency, having arrived as fully professional, talented rugby players. They did not turn up in short trousers and grow to be very good at rugby.

Ireland knew exactly what they were getting, as did the hired hands. These guys are a lot nearer Kevin Pietersen or Zola Budd, say, than Billy Vunipola.

And all of this is within sport’s rules around nationality.

Ireland are merely playing the system, like many others. Even so, given that it is all a ploy, one wonders what the Easter Rising has to do with it.

Pep Guardiola fears that Manchester City may fall behind in the title race if they continue to drop points.

It is already quite late in the day for that. City have played the teams lying first, second and fourth coming out of this weekend’s fixtures and have taken one point from nine, with two of those games at home. They are already playing catch-up.

Racism claims shame Yorkshire but team drinking culture does not

What passed for banter at Yorkshire Cricket Club, according to former player Azeem Rafiq, sounds appalling.

Rafiq was on the staff between 2008 and 2018, and heard Asian players referred to as ‘elephant washers’ and ‘Pakis’.

Despite captaining England age-group teams that included Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Jos Buttler, he is out of the sport at 29, but is helping an independent inquiry into institutional racism at the county.

One of his allegations, however, is rather more complex. Rafiq speaks of a drinking culture that makes Muslim players feel they have to consume alcohol to fit in. He says this pressure made him do things he later regretted.

Well, yes and no. There should obviously be respect for all cultures, in the way that Alastair Cook ensured Moeen Ali was clear of the scene if England’s players celebrated with champagne; but if some team members want to have a beer after the game, that is their right, too.

There are plenty of teetotal athletes in sport, who manage to bond perfectly well without joining in every activity. Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane do not seem any less attached to Jurgen Klopp or Andy Robertson who, anecdotal evidence suggests, are apt to party as hard as they play after a trophy has been raised.

Social activities may have been more ingrained at Yorkshire, but if Rafiq compromised his principles, that was his mis-step. A multi-cultural environment acknowledges and accepts differences and, by the sounds of it, Yorkshire fell alarmingly short of best practice. But that was the problem; not the precise details of every round.

Selling Grady for £18m was good business

With West Ham in the top half of the table, and West Bromwich still in the bottom three, the row over the sale of Grady Diangana is placed in sharper perspective.

The player has potential and, in an ideal world, would not have been sold. Yet this is not an ideal world. West Ham had a long list of players they wanted to trade ahead of Diangana last summer, and for a lot more money, but there were no takers. West Brom’s offer of £18million, then, for a player who had spent the previous season on loan in the Championship, was timely. And it was not as if the supporters who were most vocal about Diangana’s sale had been calling for his inclusion in the team.

Diangana had shown potential, but no more, and his transfer became just another excuse to target the board.

As it stands, Vladimir Coufal appears a more than adequate replacement, bought for less than a third of Diangana’s price. By West Ham’s standards, it was good business.

Yes, there are issues with law interpretations as football gropes its way through the introduction of VAR. But let’s not create conflict where none exists.

‘I don’t know the rules any more,’ sighed Kevin De Bruyne after Gabriel Jesus’s goal was disallowed against Tottenham on Saturday.

Really? It was handball. Would have been handball 20 years ago, and it’s handball now. He controlled it with his arm. Not everything needs an inquest.

The last we heard of Chris Farnell, he was in a partnership that was buying Burnley. Now he appears to have unfinished business at Charlton. His client, Paul Elliott, is disputing Thomas Sandgaard’s ownership of the club and is threatening legal action over £500,000 he claims to have invested during the summer.

‘That’s one of many things we’re discussing with Chris Farnell, as he is representing Paul Elliott,’ confirmed Sandgaard.

‘There are a lot of disputes going back with Chris Farnell.’

And maybe it’s all just business. Even so, the Premier League might wish to factor this in before ratifying any takeovers at Turf Moor.

Farnell is a lawyer and cannot be held responsible for the complexities of his clients’ arrangements, but trouble does seem to follow some people around.

Maybe these times make cynics of us all, but it does seem rather convenient that doubts were raised over Lewis Hamilton’s knighthood, only for Boris Johnson to swoop in and save the day. Just like he’s saving Christmas, really.

This was always going to happen. A diverse panel will pick the candidates to be FA chairman; no doubt a diverse list will be created. Yet FA chief executive Mark Bullingham has warned that finding an ex-player to fill the role will be tough. Of course, he’s right. We are in the midst of a global economic crisis and sport is one of the industries most acutely affected.

The idea the FA could be steered through these waters by an ambassadorial individual with little boardroom or fiscal experience is fanciful. It is why inclusion at executive level within clubs is so important.

The possibility of Wes Morgan, for instance, being offered a boardroom position at Leicester when he retires is game-changing. It should be happening everywhere.

Source: m.allfootballapp.com

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.
Learn more