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the
manager
WINTER 2011
UK national of Greek descent and I
want to get that Greek feed of, say,
FA Cup games, in the Greek language
then there’s nothing to stop me from
buying the relevant subscription and
decoder hardware. However, the
Greek broadcaster is not allowed to
market its service to me directly – it’s
the difference between what’s known
as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ marketing.
There’s a fine line between the two,
but it effectively means that Greek
broadcaster can’t target a UK national
of Greek descent and say ‘come and
buy your decoder and card from us’.”
There is, however, at least one major
question which remains unanswered.
“What the European Court of Justice
was not asked to rule upon was the
whole question of internet and mobile
rights,” says Turner. “This could have
a major impact, as there’s no need
for end users to buy special decoder
equipment to pick up internet or
mobile feeds and there is also no need
for active marketing. However, as it
wasn’t covered in the current ruling we
can continue to treat those rights as
we have done previously and deal with
any problems if and when they do
arise further down the line.”
Like all of these things, the ruling
will take time to reveal its full impact,
but Turner believes that it will not
have too great an effect on the FA’s
current round of rights sales. “We
currently have our European tender
in the marketplace,” he says, “and
we’re getting every indication that [the
ruling] is not having an impact on
what we’re trying to achieve.”
Something which definitely will
have an impact on the European
TV football rights market is
UEFA’s decision to sell the rights to
international tournament qualifying
games as a single package from 2014
onwards, a scheme which the FA
signed up to in March of this year. Up
until now, each of UEFA’s members
has sold the rights to its team’s
qualifying games on an individual
basis; now all 53 associations have
agreed to sell their rights collectively.
What’s not quite so clear, in
Turner’s opinion, is how this change
will affect the FA’s revenues from its
own major domestic competition. “Up
until now, we’ve always marketed the
rights to the FA Cup in tandem with
the rights to the international team’s
games,” he says. “Now, however, we’ve
had to decouple those rights and we
simply don’t know what kind of effect
that’s going to have.”
So when all of these rights issues
have been cleared up, will Turner
actually get the time to sit down and
watch any of the games? “I try to
watch as much televised football as
I can,” he says. “Not just because I
have a keen interest in the game, but
also because we can all learn from
the different ways that broadcasters
present the game.”
There is, however, one ‘rights’ issue
that even Turner can’t negotiate his
way around. “I record an awful lot of
matches,” he says, “but there’s only so
much football that someone with four
children will ever be allowed to sit
down and watch.”
This scheme has been devised to
ensure a more level playing field for
the smaller nations. Under the old
system, smaller countries lived in
hope of maximising their revenues
by drawing one of the more bankable
teams in qualifying for the World Cup
or the European Championships. “It’s
a reworking of the collective selling
model that UEFA’s been so successful
with in the Champions League and
the Europa League,” says Turner.
But won’t this levelling of the
playing field have a negative effect on
the larger and more successful nations,
including England? “We, along
with Germany, France, Italy, Spain
and Holland, have been the most
successful in marketing our rights,
both domestically and overseas, so
in theory we would have the most to
lose,” says Turner. “However, we’ve all
agreed a minimum payment structure
which will run throughout the
scheme’s trial period – from 2014 to
2018 – so we should get what pretty
much amounts to financial parity with
where we’re at the moment. The idea
is to grow the whole market, so there’s
more available to everyone.”
www.thefa.com