Murdoch Warns Against Fapl Rights Split

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose satellite TV firm BSkyB transformed televised
football in the UK in the early 90’s, has warned that it would equate to a
‘disaster’ should the FA Premier League clubs ever decide to sell their TV
rights individually.

Murdoch, who made the comments in a rare television interview for a Sky One
documentary to be broadcast next week, stated: ‘It could be a disaster, I
believe, if they broke up the Premier League, and freed everyone to sell their
own rights.

‘We’d end up having to pay a lot of money for, say, the six best teams, and
the other teams would have no money.’

The documentary, entitled ‘How TV Changed Football Forever’, sees Murdoch
look back on his decision to pump millions into broadcasting the FA Premier
League.

‘In life, if you’re building a company, you’ve got to take risks. And this
was certainly, on the face of it, very risky,’ he said.
‘But I knew from
selling newspapers or from television elsewhere that sport is the great, number
one common denominator. And, of that, football is number one.’

Sky has held the live TV rights to the English top-flight since the FA
Premier League was created in 1992. It has held the rights on an exclusive basis
until this coming season for which it paid a record £1.31bn last year to show
two-thirds of televised matches from 2007 to 2010, with the remaining games
bought up by Setanta Sports.

The FA Premier League sells the rights collectively and all 20 of the
division’s clubs are guaranteed a certain amount of TV exposure.

The documentary, made by independent production company Associated
Rediffusion, will be aired on Sky One at 10pm on Tuesday.