Collective TV deal vital to game, say MPs
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Your support makes all the difference.Football broadcasting rights should not be sold "like washing powder", the Government declared yesterday as MPs criticised European plans to overhaul current British TV deals. Kim Howells, the broadcasting minister, agreed with backbenchers that regulators often suffered from a "rush of blood to the head" as they tried to treat football like any other business.
Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons, MPs from all parties lined up to attack proposals by Brussels to end current viewing rights to matches. The European Commission has objected to the way the 20 Premier League clubs sell television rights for games collectively, claiming that the arrangement is "anti-competitive".
But the MPs said that ending the current set-up would threaten the very fabric of the game, slashing the income of poorer Premiership sides and lower division clubs.
Responding to their concerns, Mr Howells said: "Every so often licensing authorities have a rush of blood to the head and they start looking at issues like soccer as if they were looking at the sale of washing powder. It's something we have to be very careful about."
Alan Keen, Labour MP for Feltham and Heston and chairman of the all-party football group, said radical change would be disastrous.
"I hope Government is addressing this extremely seriously as football as we know it could come to an end in a very short time if that is not addressed properly," he said.
"What keeps football going is the dream factor – the pyramid we have got where we all dream that our clubs can climb from the lower divisions outside the Football League. We need better and fairer distribution of the revenue to retain that dream factor."
Clive Betts, Labour MP for Sheffield Attercliffe, warned: "The further proposals by the European Union to treat football as any other business and force a situation where individual clubs negotiate their own TV rights will take us backwards."
Nick Harvey, for the Liberal Democrats, warned: "If we go down the road that the EU are encouraging us to go, it will damage competitive sport."
John Greenway, Tory MP for Ryedale, said the current collective agreement over TV rights was to the benefit of smaller clubs.
Mr Howells said that the Government had no plans to revise the listed events, the so-called "crown jewels" of sporting events restricted to terrestrial TV channels that was last updated in 1998.
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