Football TV Rights - Ofcom Investigation + The Future

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BBC Sport article and a short interview with Tom Mockridge, chief executive of Virgin Media and former chief executive of News International, Rupert Murdoch's empire.

Premier League: Football broadcasting battle hots up

A third player in the game after Sky and BT and one which could ultimately affect clubs of our size.

Details of an Ofcom investigation launched last year

Ofcom investigation into Premier League football rights

The indication is that if Ofcom rule in favour of Virgin Media's complaint the TV rights deal in 2019/2020 may just change the landscape of domestic football dramatically. Calls by Mockridge to end the 3pm "blackout" which currently exists and make every single Premier League football match available for viewing on live TV. Legally, anyway. I'm aware there are currently "ways and means" to watch 3pm kick offs on TV but I won't go into that.

The reason I'm posting this is because I'm slightly concerned as to the effect this may have on clubs our size. Our crowds drop anyway for mid week games when there's football on TV but now we might have 3pm kick offs to worry about as well.

Is the key to stabilise even more than we already are (possible?) and make ourselves virtually bulletproof to any changes we may encounter or do we need to really push further up that ladder and make the gaining of new supporters a priority?

Does anyone think that this won't effect us in the slightest?

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It is a very interesting debate and one that I am sure we will come back to. Not sure where I stand to be honest. The massive increase in TV revenue next season does filter down, millions more per team in the Championship I think (could do with some precise detail on this), but of course it is relative. Would we want to be saying 'we're alright Jack', knowing that we could easily be still in non League or end up back there battling against Premier League games on TV at 3pm on Saturday?

On a related issue, I did have to chortle to myself when Jeff Stelling on Sky during FA Cup 2nd round day said… (paraphrase) 'if the FA want to get people to treat the FA Cup more seriously, they should insist that more games are kicked off at 3pm on Saturday'. Difficult to make up really, someone from Sky saying the FA should make clubs kick off at 3pm on Saturday!!!

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An even more ridiculous statement considering Sky are currently pushing their "10 football league games in 10 days" campaign which included Forest travelling to Blackburn on a Monday night and Middlesbrough travelling to Brighton for a 12.30pm kick off this Saturday. Of course we know all about Sky moving games. I appreciate we get some money for it but as I understand it in the grand scheme of things isn't a great deal of money and the home team get the lions share of it.

I took part in a survey this morning which I was emailed from a marketing company and was on behalf of Sky. It sounds like they're worrying that BT and possibly Virgin are beginning to circle over football league rights as a few of the questions were asking how important televised live games were for the club I supported and would I be interested in dedicated content for individual clubs and even more televised live football league games. I have to wonder if we're going to end up with a "Sky Sports/BT/Virgin Football League" channel or channels. Surely the only clubs which would truly benefit are the bigger fish in the lower leagues whose crowds wouldn't really be affected as much eg. Portsmouth, Luton, Plymouth, Sheffield United, Coventry etc...