Sports and the Media: Sport TV rights throughout Europe, a comparative approach

Résumé du document

The relation between sports and television started years back. We all have in mind the image of Jesse Owen winning four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4X100m relay during the 1936 Nazis Berlin Olympic Games. Thus, we can assume that sport has provided the greatest images ever to television. Moreover, television and sport are truly interdependent. Sport content is vital for the television channels and is rated as premium content. The basic rule that media strategy analysts taught at school is to own those premium content programs at all costs. Perhaps, that is the reason why broadcasters have been spending a huge part of their programme budget for the acquisition of sports content since the last couple of decades. In the modern day, sport TV rights comprise the major part of the programme budget and are regarded as the primary field of expenditure. As sport is the most practiced leisure activity worldwide, its broadcasting through TV gives it a tremendous entertainment dimension, which dominates all the other leisure alternatives such as music, cinema, books, and so on. It has also become a huge industry. For instance, the amount of annual football transfer fees in Europe is equal to the French debt for social security.

Extraits

[...] Canal plus has bought the League 1 rights for million per season for the period 2005- 2008. For the period, preceding this record negotiation divided the rights between TPS and Canal Plus. In 2005, Canal plus wanted to pay at all costs of the whole championship, and consequently impeded TPS to own part of it. Thus, the price increased by 90%. The next tender is going to be held this autumn. The context has changed: Canal plus and TPS have merged, and France television wanted to buy more football content. [...]

[...] 2005-2008 : actually Canal + pay 550M for the first season for second and 650M for the third. v. Great Britain The Premier League is the most expensive championship throughout Europe. The Football Association (FA - name of the English league) divided the rights on six shares. In 2004, BskyB bought the six shares for billion 1.5 million) for the period 2004-2007. The 2007-2010 negotiation was held at the FA in May 2006 was surprising. The TV rights price increased by 70% when compared with the last tender. [...]

[...] Indeed, ADSL TV operators are booming. We can count five major companies: Orange (formerly France Telecom) which is the market leader, Free (one of the first proposing such services), Neuf Telecom, Club Internet (which has been bought by Neuf), and Alice Telecom Italia company). Nevertheless, this boom in ADSL TV is going hand in hand with pay TV channels; French people can access them, thanks to their phone plug. Consequently, the European television market is almost liberalised. The competition is very harsh between each station to obtain sports TV rights, which assure them to occupy a leading place in their home market. [...]

[...] Indeed, the competition is the top elite football club competition. The competition is between, as its name indicates, the champions of each national championship. Consequently, the most powerful and richest European clubs, with the best players participated in it and want to play it. It is an important source of revenue for clubs. It stands for almost 60% of their revenue, and the UEFA Champions League is very profitable. The repartition of the rights among participants is set up related to the size of the national TV rights market and the audiences. [...]

[...] Nonetheless, free trade throughout Europe television is impeded. ii. Sports linked revenue for TV If those companies are managing to create monopolies, in order to pay a lot to acquire sport TV rights, they do so because it is profitable. Firstly, it brings new subscribers as mentioned earlier. Secondly, the main source of revenue for sport broadcaster is advertising. For instance, a 30 seconds ad during the 2006 World Cup final was priced by TF1 at €250,000. The cost of TV ad depends on the shares of audience. [...]