FA Cup Rights (And Wrongs)

01Apr07

Have the FA made the right move by selling out to the highest bidder? By switching FA Cup and England international coverage from BBC and Sky to ITV and Setanta the FA will make itself an extra £125m over four years, a 42% increase on the current deal. All well and good on the face of it I suppose, as FA chief executive Brian Barwick says, ‘we [the FA] will have in excess of £100m a year to put back into football.’ Undoubtedly this money will be used to good effect, however I can’t help thinking that the FA are carelessly underestimating the good work that the BBC have done promoting the FA Cup since 2001.

Let’s be honest, the BBC have worked tirelessly to make an, at times, rather banal competition exciting again. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Cup and Third Round afternoon is my favourite day on the footballing calendar, however I think we have to give the BBC credit for working hard to promote a product that is undeniably less glamorous than the Premiership or Champions League. Through focussing on ‘the romance of the Cup’ and avoiding constant selection of all-Premiership ties they have offered something that Sky’s weekly league coverage cannot. With a little bit of hype and a bit of commitment to football outside the top tier, the BBC have revitalised the Cup.

My worry is that ITV will not have the ability to continue this sort of commitment both in terms of presentation budget and, of course, the pressure of advertising revenue. ITV have bought 13 FA Cup matches per season, which by my reckoning is 5 down on the BBC this year and will give them about two matches per round where currently the BBC have three. As a result I really cannot see a situation where ITV won’t feature games involving two from Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool. Assuming they spilt the cost of buying the rights 50-50 with Setanta they’ve just spent £212m which they need to compensate with some decent advertising money. It’s not ITV’s fault, but they just cannot compete with the BBC in terms of freedom over picking games and potentially this could be very dangerous for the FA Cup.

In a way the BBC have fallen victim to their own success. The only reason ITV and Setanta are willing to pay so much for the Cup is because of the audience figures the Beeb have succeeded in raising. Indeed questions have to be raised over whether ITV and Setanta have vastly overpaid for the rights. I can’t help thinking that we could witness ITV Digital all over again – although with less catastrophic consequences of course. Setanta in particular look a less than solid bet to ever stump up the money, particularly as they’ve already spent a fortune on second rate Premiership packages that I’m quite sure will net very few subscribers.

Although as Chris Doidge mentions in his blog, the person who seemingly will lose the most from this deal is Gabby Logan who, earlier this year, moved from ITV to BBC to anchor their FA coverage. Oh dear.

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Tags: bbc, bskyb, fa cup, football, football association, itv, setanta, tv