FA agrees to allow Uefa to sell TV rights for England qualifiers - 7M sport

FA agrees to allow Uefa to sell TV rights for England qualifiers



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Posted Wednesday, March 23, 2011 by theguardian.com

• Deal beginning in 2014 is worth £25m a year
• FA Cup matches to be sold separately from internationals

FA agrees to allow Uefa to sell TV rights for England qualifiers
Michel Platini's plan to sell all rights to Uefa nations' competitive internationals has been agreed by its 53 members.

The Football Association has signed up to a Uefa scheme to centralise the sale of its international television rights after securing important guarantees, but now faces a huge challenge to reconcile it with its own FA Cup deals.

The Uefa president Michel Platini on Tuesday confirmed that all 53 member associations had agreed to a collective selling model for international qualifiers from 2014.

The FA had been concerned that it would be left disadvantaged by the plan but has succeeded in securing minimum guarantees that will bring in about £25m a year. The FA is understood to have negotiated until late on Saturday night and believes the amount it will get under the centralised Uefa deal will exceed its existing income from international rights.

"We thought it through long and hard and we have got a good deal for ourselves out of it. It is higher than the current valuation of our rights," said the FA general secretary, Alex Horne.

"We have gone into this with our eyes wide open. It is a creative idea and we believe it will work."

As part of the negotiations, Uefa also dropped an earlier idea to try and centralise the sponsorship and marketing rights. Uefa will market the collective rights to European Championships and World Cup qualifiers in four-year cycles, beginning in 2014.

That leaves the FA with a dilemma over its FA Cup rights, the value of which has been driven by selling them jointly with internationals in recent years. Under four-year deals signed at the height of the market, the rights to FA Cup and England internationals were sold for £425m domestically and £150m overseas. But Setanta, which contributed £150m, then collapsed into administration and the FA filled the hole by signing a new four-year deal with ESPN.

With the two contracts – one with ITV and one with ESPN – now out of sync, it is understood that the FA will attempt to sell a two-year deal to either ITV or the BBC in order to harmonise the cycles again.

That would enable the FA to market the rights to the FA Cup, currently subject to an ongoing review in a bid to rebuild its appeal, concurrently with Uefa's international rights in a bid to maintain their value.

Maximising value from its TV rights is vital to balancing the FA's books, which are still encumbered by repayments on the loans taken out to build Wembley.

The Uefa president, Michel Platini, said centralising the match rights was "essential". Uefa hopes that the arrangement will leave smaller national sides less reliant on luck in drawing a big name to maximise revenues and able to plan for the long term.

"It is a project aimed, above all, at protecting and developing national team football. And, what is more, the knock-on effect will be guaranteed revenue for each association," said Platini.

"You will therefore all be able to concentrate on the football, without having to worry what the draws might throw up and whether their outcome will be favourable – or not – in terms of TV rights."



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