BT’s Euro deal is seen as ‘mistake’
IT Is looking increasingly likely that the next Champions League TV rights contract in the UK will return to the proven model of shared coverage between terrestrial and subscription channels.
A leading figure in the TV sports business was told by a high-ranking UEFA official that the European ruling body regard the exclusive threeyear deal with BT sport — worth £897million and in the first season of three — as a ‘mistake’.
The feeling at UEFA is that BT have delivered a first-class production of the tournament but that the Champions League is suffering from losing the big viewing figures that free-to-air television delivers.
The first leg of Manchester City’s quarter-final against Paris saint- Germain last Wednesday had a peak of only 1.1m when ITV would have had at least five times that number for a game featuring England’s only remaining team in the competition.
It is expected that the tender for the next Champions League rights cycle will start later this year and that ITV or another terrestrial partner will return, with sky and BT competing for the other share of the rights.
VOTING starts this week for the Football Writers Association Footballer of the Year award that is always a better gauge of the stand-out performer than the Professional Footballers Association’s equivalent, which suffers from the choices being made before the business end of the season. However, even with the FWA ballot, there is a danger this year of the vote being split for players of champions-elect Leicester, leading to a repeat of 1999 when Tottenham’s David Ginola (right) was the surprise winner in the year Manchester United won the treble. Sir Alex Ferguson has always used that outcome to question football writers’ knowledge of the game, adding that Ginola got the vote for ‘one good game against Barnsley’. PETER ALLISS, BBC’s 85-year-old voice of golf, was on typical blundering form at the Masters. First he described Dustin Johnson as Dustin Hoffman, the Hollywood actor, and then — when winner Danny Willett was seen embracing agent Chubby Chandler — the portly Alliss said Chubby ‘should be modelling for Toby Jug’. In response, Chandler, who also represents the Masters joint runner-up Lee Westwood, said: ‘I am a very happy Toby jug.’
SKY SPORTS not being prepared to reveal their Masters ratings may have something to do with the fact that their peak viewing figure at the climax of the tournament was just 276,000 compared to 2.5m on BBC. Sky’s best figure of the night was at the start of their live action — when they inherited around 925,000 from the Tottenham v Manchester United TV game — but that soon dropped off.