Mike Mulraney urges Scottish clubs to scrap BBC TV deal

[ian1964 10,563]

The BBC spend £68million a year on Match of the Day highlights

£1m a year is spent to screen Scottish snippets on Sportscene

Currently the SPFL earn around £16m a year from Sky Sports and BT Sport for live coverage of games

 

SPFL board member Mike Mulraney is ready to urge Scottish clubs to pull the plug on their broadcasting deal with the BBC.

 

His clarion call comes just 24 hours after Sportsmail revealed the withering comments of Barbara Slater, the Corporation’s Director of Sport, who told a London conference that Scottish football does not merit a bigger slice of the licence fee.

 

Slater’s dismissive approach brought a furious reaction from the SPFL yesterday and left Mulraney - the chairman of Alloa - accusing the BBC of acting like the ‘English Broadcasting Corporation’.

 

The BBC spend £68million a year on Match of the Day highlights compared to £1m a year to screen Scottish snippets on Sportscene.

 

That huge disparity comes when many of our clubs are struggling to make ends meet financially.

 

‘I was absolutely flabbergasted by what I read in the Scottish Daily Mail this morning,’

 

Mulraney said on Friday night as he insisted that ‘enough was enough’.

 

‘This appears to confirm my long-held suspicion that many within the BBC now consider it to be the EBC.

 

‘And if they do view it as the English Broadcasting Corporation and feel we are worthy of nothing more than scant consideration it would appear to be time to consider removing our content from that platform.

 

‘It seems to be unquestionable now that they are openly admitting they are short-changing Scotland and Scottish football. They are being quite open in how they view it.

 

‘That’s not something that we can – or should – accept.

 

‘There can be no clearer indication that it’s time for us to say “enough” to this corporation which no longer seems remotely interested in Scotland or its sport.’

 

Mulraney, one of the Championship representatives on the SPFL’s eight-man decision making body, added: ‘I am speaking here purely as the chairman of Alloa, not with my SPFL hat.

 

‘But I can confirm that the view I hold is one I will be expressing strongly to my colleagues at the SPFL.’

 

Slater sparked the war of words on Thursday when she answered a question on media rights disparities from SFA Director of Communications Darryl Broadfoot at a Daily Telegraph sponsored Business of Sport conference.

 

She responded: ‘The sports rights market is intensely competitive and there are all sorts of dynamics that are taken into consideration when you put together what you would bid for rights.

 

‘We are, to a degree, going to be dictated by the market rate.

 

‘And the fact is – and I know the comparison you’re going to draw between highlights of football in Scotland and highlights that we would pay for the Premier League.

 

‘The truth is the Premier League is a global brand. It is loved by audiences and we think it’s incredibly important that Match of the Day, as the highlights broadcaster of the Premier League football, is an incredibly important programme for us to invest in.

 

‘So, yes, there is inequality but, as a broadcaster, as someone investing the licence fee, I’ve got to invest it the way the market dictates.’

 

That drew a furious response from the SPFL, just days after Sportsmail had revealed that its chief executive Neil Doncaster was preparing plans to pursue a fairer deal from broadcasters.

 

With a dig at Gary Lineker’s salary, SPFL chairman Ralph Topping said Scottish clubs would no longer be satisfied with the ‘crumbs off the table’ that were currently being offered.

 

‘The days of the BBC selling Scottish football short are drawing to a close,’ he said. ‘There is an overwhelming argument that the public money spent by the BBC on the UK’s national game should be more evenly split.

 

‘There is no doubt that the English Premier League is one of the most powerful leagues in the world, and the BBC is paying £68m per annum over the next three years for its slice of that particular cake, but Scottish football will no longer be satisfied with the crumbs off the table.

 

‘Compared to England, Scots contribute a tenth of the licence fee, yet at less than £1m for TV highlights, our BBC deal is only 1/60th of what the BBC pays to the English Premier League – and that doesn’t include the money they also pay to the English Football League for highlights. The BBC is damaging the game in Scotland and these double standards are indefensible for a publicly-funded broadcaster.

 

‘It’s a sad reflection of the BBC’s approach to its investment in Scottish football that Gary Lineker’s salary is double the amount the BBC pays for TV highlights of over 250 SPFL games each year.

 

‘In the current deal, the BBC has almost halved the amount they previously spent on Scottish football. There comes a point where you have to say ‘enough is enough’ and we’ve reached it.’

 

Currently the SPFL earn around £16m a year from Sky Sports and BT Sport for live coverage of games. The BBC pay an estimated £3m, in total, to Scottish clubs per annum when live radio coverage of matches is taken into account.

 

It is fair to say also that, at the time they current deal was agreed, there was little in the way of criticism from within Hampden’s corridors of power.

 

Yet Topping added: ‘Fans, clubs, politicians and the Scottish public recognise that, as our national broadcaster, the BBC has a duty to do the right thing.

 

‘The facts could not be clearer – for far too long the BBC has been discriminating against Scottish football and it’s time for the corporation to increase its contribution to the sport in Scotland to properly reflect what our country contributes to the licence fee.

 

‘There is one more season left on our current deal with the BBC and we’re determined that any new deal far better reflects the importance of the game in Scotland and the hundreds of millions the corporation receives from Scottish licence fee payers every year.’

 

In response, BBC Scotland said the corporation was one of a number of organisations who regularly compete for sports rights.

 

In a statement, the corporation said: ‘When we negotiate for rights our priority is to get value for money for the licence fee payer.

 

‘Negotiation is two way - the SPFL come to the table with their wishes and we decide on how much we can reasonably spend on the rights package on offer.

 

‘Supporters in Scotland tell us they enjoy watching highlights programmes of both the Scottish Premiership and the English Premier League and we don’t believe that audiences in Scotland are being short-changed.

 

‘We have a long standing relationship with football’s governing bodies in Scotland and we believe our involvement has a positive impact on the appreciation of the game in this country.’

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3083981/SPFL-board-member-Mike-Mulraney-urges-Scottish-clubs-scrap-BBC-TV-deal.html#ixzz3aHyxltoy

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[Rousseau 9,782]

I don't think I could take more Scottish highlights.

[barca72 440]

Here they come, the SPFL boys, one after the other claiming that the BBC are 'entitled' to pay them more using the %age of licence-payers as argument. Keep going boys that stance will work.

Quite apart from the fact that they have been without a sponsor since their hastily engineered league was brought into effect, and that the biggest %age of monies is vacuumed off by the east end team, maybe there are other reasons that they are not doing well ...

a) an utterly abject and talentless executive.

b) for the most part an utterly forgettable product on the field which is very poorly marketed.

c) everybody wants to ignore the fact that their brightest star is languishing in the lower leagues, and until they admit to that fact and start to make amends for that fact, the truth is they will continue to be impotent.

d) they seem to have accepted the perception that Rangers will return to the Premiership next season and hence they will have games worth marketing again, and therefore the BBC will be 'entitled' to pay them accordingly.

e) they seem to have forgotten or just can't deal with the fact that they need to re-interest the life blood of the game, i.e. the Rangers support. This is a support - well, in my own case - which gave up interest in teams who tried to kill us, except when they stood in front of our forward progress.

Their flagship team managed to attract, Att: 6,984, in Perth last night ( I wonder how many people actually knew they were playing last night ), they will be lucky to attract twice that at all other games today; Rangers will attract more than twice their total figures on Sunday.

Four years ago Liewell said that he wanted to dominate Scottish football. Well, he's doing that. However, just what is it he is dominating - a sea of green bums on seats at C1888c park? Who cares? Hell, even the SFA promote the game so well that they won't allow the general public entry to the Youth Cup Final!

So Mr. Mulraney just what is all this public whining about? Are you attempting to bring on board an apathetic support base to empathise with your cause or is it really a plea for Pete to step up and produce a new broadcasting contract that we will never get to know the details of? You made your bed, you know how that goes.

However, Rangers only need a few £M pounds invested in the playing staff for the next couple of seasons and they can kick-start the gravy train again. Want to come along?

[RANGERRAB 3,385]

The idea that the BBC are under-paying for its SPFL coverage is just laughable

[compo 6,466]

if you go by the product on sale we are probably being way overpaid some of , no most of the football is dire in Scotland