I'm rather surprised that BT have biided for something they don't know will even exist - namely a new European club competition. On digital spy, someone suggested a new Anglo french competition, but also added that it was questionable it would survive.
That's a gamble from BT, but I'm inclined to agree. Everything has a price and a value. I'm not sure, speaking as a Rugby Union fan, that the price that BT have paid matches what the value is.
The Eurpoean thing is interesting and rather confusing. It's no secret the English and French clubs are threatening to break away from the Heineken Cup, so whether BT's rights to any "future European competitions" means in the event of a non ERC event being created BT have the rights, or a presumption that Premiership Rugby have the right to sell the rights to games featuring their teams (which would be somewhat unprecedented) remains to be seen.
Yes, this has to be seen in the context of Premiership Rugby and the Ligue Nationale de Rugby's threat to quit the ERC at the end of next season. They want to reduce the Heineken Cup to 20 teams and change the qualifying rules for the Pro12 sides so that only the top six qualify (a move which would almost certainly lead to Italy being no longer a part of the competition and Scotland's representation cut to a maximum of one - there would almost certainly be as many seasons when Scotland would not feature in the tournament at all). Leaving aside of the right of Premiership Rugby to dictate how the other Home Unions do their business - not to mention to apparently sell the rights across the UK on their behalf - when this was announced I immediately thought that this was yet another move in their posturing. But if it is, no-one appears to have told British Telecom that. The BT Vision CEO seems to think that he will not only be broadcasting rugby, but running it too (nearly unprecedented - although it did happen to the National Rugby League in Australia for many years).
It'll be interesting to see how it goes. It may eventually end up in the lap of a High Court judge. Someone has sold rights they didn't have the authority to do so.
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It's another hugely inflated deal too - £38m a year compared to £18m a year currently from Sky/ESPN. A good weekend schedule filler though for BT and they haven't got to schedule it around football considering the 12.45pm kick-off is their major commitment. I agree though possibly a deal breaker for ESPN - it was the main thing they had once you stripped away the Premier League football.
Yeah, its goodbye ESPN once this season's over I'm afraid. A pity - they were a basic channel on UPC Ireland and thus a good place to catch major sports without having to pay out for Sky Sports. ESPN will no doubt maintain a skeletal UK presence through ESPN America and EPSN Classic but the main channel will almost certainly close -the decision seems to be already made, they don't seem to be renewing any rights.
One suspects that chief executive doesn't know the first thing about rugby from that article, and as you say even if the English and French leagues set up a tournament that does bring in the Welsh and Scottish clubs they have no right to sell such rights without first consulting them. Indeed be interesting to know if the Top 14 were consulted on that deal too - it would be quite funny if that answer is no and as a result of their greed we end up with a European Cup without English teams.
Also are we assuming ESPN didn't bid then for the rights. All the reports seem to have been about BT winning the rights rather than ESPN and Sky losing them.
RUGBY UNION RFU says it did not give Premiership Rugby consent to grant European broadcast rights
According to an article in another newspaper the other day, seemingly French law is more intrusive on this, and the french clubs could be prevented by French law from breaking away from the european cup. You know, it's all getting a bit messy.
Just reading the front page of a rugby newspaper this morning and it appears Premier Rugby are to ringfence £100m of the £152m for their European competition and use the money as a sweetner to try and entice the non-English clubs to back the deal, as well as give them control of their own TV rights.
The Sky deal revealed this week is worth £70m, so if the BT deal was to be split as such it would value the Premiership rights lower than the previous deal (well, the initial Sky/Setanta deal anyway) but give the English clubs more through the "BT European Cup". I can't see the other clubs backing it though when they've already signed a deal through the right channels and I can't see them wanting to let Premier Rugby and BT effectively control the European Cup and Challenge Cup. It makes it look too with a supposed £100m/£52m split whether Premier Rugby may end up out of pocket should they not get their own way, and also makes me wonder whether BT have given such weight to the currently non-existent European Cup in the knowledge the breakaway probably won't happen and they can then cut their fee considerably and get the Premiership rights for less than they were valued at last time (considerably less actually as this is £52m for 4 years rather than £54m for 3)
I suspect too that the amount that the clubs are willing to deal with in getting what they want from a European competition is higher than the real amount - i.e. they will expect to retain a much larger portion from a revised European competition than they do at the moment, so that the split is to an extent arbitrary. If the current European competition survives, I would expect that the amount BT pay for the English league will be substantially higher than the amount ESPN / Sky pay today.
The biggest question will be what the French sides decide - they have handed in their notice with the English sides.
I suspect a good chunk of that £100m is going the way of English clubs, and suspect too they would get the better deal if other clubs did sign up to it. The article stated it as a £100m sweetner to get other countries to sign up, but obviously there is no way they'd be giving away the full £100m so my interpretation is basically they're valuing the (currently non-existent) European part of the deal at £100m. The same article also said the French were not aware of the deal Premier Rugby were about to strike with BT, so I really do hope the French do as the French do and take great offence to the English effectively breaking away from them and negotiating their own deal rather than the French and English keeping a united front on the matter as they had so far.
It'll be interesting too how conditional the Sky £70m deal is on the English clubs competing.
Last edited by Brekkie on 16 September 2012 2:27pm
The Heiniken Cup is the problem, it's trying too hard to be two things, a) the Champions League of RU and b| the Europa League too. Allowing developing teams in, using some spaces which rightly should be used by other Premiership (and even Championship sides) from England, More Top14 representation, and Celtic sides has devalued the early stages. BT's use of a successor competition as a term is key to this discussion. The Heiniken Cup's days are numbered. BT seemingly taking the view, alongside English club rugby, that it needs scrapping and a new format established. In that eventually the agreement between English Rugby, BT and the Clubs would be pivotal in the new competition. If however the Heiniken is salvaged, then BSB's deal will take precedence.
I suggest therefore that the fate iof the Heiniken Cup is key to unscrambling these two supposedly competing 'exclusive' deals in the international sector.
Legally though BT and Premier Rugby don't have a leg to stand on and there is surely zero chance of the Heineken Cup board meeting on Tuesday and deciding to scrap their competition and cancel their contract with Sky in favour of agreeing to be the bitches of BT and the English Premiership and potentially facing a very costly legal battle with Sky.
The wider issue here to is the bundling of rights - it isn't in the interests of viewers or indeed broadcasters to effectively bundle all rights together. I've no issue with all the Premiership rugby games being on one broadcaster but if BT want the Heineken Cup rights they should be bidding for those rights in a fair and open tender process, not doing secret deals to get the lot.