Originally Posted by Steve Williams:
“I'm disappointed with The Guardian's coverage of this story, leading with the Beeb losing their exclusive deal, as if it's a disaster, when of course they're going to cover exactly the same matches they had in the last deal and for those who only listen to Five Live they won't notice any difference.”
I've only just read their article today, but I agree with you, they've come at it from a very misleading angle. Really the story here is that talkSPORT have won a large chunk of the rights, with the BBC's deal being a sideline as very little has changed there. Yet Media Guardian does tend to report radio sports deals by looking at things from primarily a BBC perspective, so I'm not surprised this was reflected in their headline and opening paragraph, but perhaps they should have taken a different approach for this particular story.
Obviously talkSPORT are the big winners from this deal, but I'm sure BBC Radio 5 Live will be pretty pleased (and relieved) with how things have turned out. They were always going to lose exclusivity and rightly so, but had The FA chosen to sell their rights differently they could have lost out on a share of the rights to potentially significant matches. I'm sure they'll be delighted that this didn't happen and they've been able to secure full, if largely non-exclusive, rights to The FA's matches.
The FA will also have done well out of this you'd imagine. While the BBC probably paid less for their share of FA rights than they did last time around due to their budget cuts and the non-exclusive nature of the deal, surely selling full and near-full rights to two broadcast partners will have secured them a bigger combined sum than selling exclusive rights to one broadcaster last time around did, which in turn will go back into FA competitions and the grassroots of the game.
The BBC Trust come out of this looking very good as well, as their report into the last FA radio rights deal will no doubt have played its part in helping to secure better value for money for the license fee payer (both in terms of cost and choice), which helps demonstrate their value as a body and we as listeners can enjoy listening to FA Cup and England commentaries and now have a genuine choice in where we go to listen to coverage of most of the games covered by these contracts.
The bottom line is that everyone wins, this deal is one we should all be very pleased with.
