Livi 1 up
2-2 Hibs
FTH
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Took their time as usual but a cracking strike to level it.
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Rangers finished with 9 …
In fairness to Colum he did give them a soft penalty and dismissed a Hibs shout. He’ll still be warned to up his game for the huns
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That was a great game.
Penalty for the huns was very soft (bizarre claims for a red card when it wasn’t even close to a goal scoring opportunity). The Lundstram card was soft enough - Xhaka got sent off for something similar a couple of years back but then referees seemed to forget that rule. But it’s good to see. Morelos didn’t catch his man clean but he had a couple of bites and knew exactly what he was trying to do. I don’t think he can have any complaints
I know they went down to 9 but still thought the Huns went super negative. They should really have left someone with pace up front or even just in midfield. They surrendered the game with 10 mins to go and just hoped Hibs wouldn’t score. Think that was poor from GVB
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Surely you mean ‘Ragers ’ finished with 9…I’ll get my coat…
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Jack Ross sacked
Don’t think they’ll do much better replacing him. Losing Tam Courts was their big mistake. Ross is a bit of a joke figure but his track record is ok.
Turns out losing 9-0 isn’t great for the career
SPFL, the new deal with Sky Sports and what it means
scottish-football
By Jordan Campbell
3h agoEleven of the 12 Scottish Premiership clubs have voted in favour of the Scottish Professional Football League’s proposed new deal with Sky Sports, The Athletic understands, with Rangers still to reach a position.
The clubs have 28 days to respond to a vote of this nature but SPFL protocol has been to ask clubs to cast their decisions within 48 hours of the proposal being sent around.
The terms of the new deal will see the annual value of the broadcast partnership increase from £25million ($29.3m) to £29m, but it could potentially reach £37m by the end of the contract in 2029.
Sky Sports has held exclusive rights to the Scottish game since 2020 and, a fortnight ago, all 12 Premiership clubs met in one room for the first time since early 2020 to discuss the deal.
Most clubs are said to be “thoroughly on board” with what is on offer as no clubs stated an objection to the proposal in the meeting but Rangers are taking their time to consider the intricacies of the deal.
Rangers and the SPFL are still in dispute following the Cinch league sponsorship deal last year that saw the Ibrox club refuse to advertise the car dealer’s branding due to it conflicting with an existing deal with Park’s Motor Group, owned by Rangers chairman Douglas Park.
The deal was renegotiated to reflect the absence of inventory from Rangers, but it controversially contained a clause that means Rangers will not be part of any future league sponsorship offerings until 2026.
An email chain has been ongoing between both parties with regards to the parameters of a potential league-wide meeting to iron out the public war of words which stemmed from this incident and during the vote to end the pandemic-hit season in 2019-20, but they have so far failed to agree which parts are to remain confidential.
Clubs are said to be fed up of the ongoing battle but the Premiership meeting to discuss the Sky deal was a productive one. There were some questions raised about the league tying itself to just one broadcaster for another seven years but there is said to have been a consensus among most clubs that this represents a significant improvement.
The existing deal expires in 2025 and is worth £25m a year to the 42 clubs but the new contract will increase in value each year and, from season 2024-25, the number of games Sky can show will rise from 48 to 60.
Payments will reach a total of £29.5m per season from 2025-26 and remain at that level until 2028-29.
However, that figure could rise further to £37m a season as it is understood Sky will also have the option of showing an additional 20 games on top of that, which would be valued at £400,000 per fixture and worth £8m in total.
That is not a concrete figure that can be banked on, however, as they will decide in 2024 whether they are taking up the option of one package of ten games, the two packages, or none at all.
There are other tweaks, with the number of league games able to be broadcast at one ground per season increasing from four to five. An issue currently is Sky have not taken up their full allocation of games the last two seasons but that is because they often have to leave room to screen potential title showdowns, for example, and so cannot prematurely use up the three games at the ground it may be decided at.
Sky want exclusivity over the rights in exchange for their money but they have been flexible to allow Premiership clubs to show five of their home games on pay-per-view, which is a slight relaxation of the Saturday afternoon 3pm blackout. It is understood while the deal would still pass even if Rangers now voted against its implementation, the SPFL do need a waiver letter to allow five live home games per club to be shown.
Some clubs in the lower divisions had made clear they wanted the opportunity to broadcast games too but it appears that is not part of the deal, which has again been a frustration for lower league clubs who haven’t been consulted despite their finances depending partly on the value of the deal brokered. One club simply said: “It will go through no matter what we think or vote.”
The strategic review by accountancy firm Deloitte was the catalyst for the renegotiation. Aberdeen, Dundee, Dundee United, Hearts and Hibernian (all except Hearts are owned by US businessmen) joined forces and had the idea to commission an independent body to assess whether the current commercial deals were delivering value.
An independent consultant from a media background was also brought in to assist with the talks on the SPFL side and present the case for the value to be elevated in line with market trends.
Meanwhile, Hibernian owner Ron Gordon is understood to have taken a leading role in discussions with Sky Sports as he spent some of his career in the media industry and has a relationship with Sky’s parent company NBC in the US.
The Hibernian owner Ron Gordon, right, has been heavily involved (Photo: Mark Scates/SNS Group via Getty Images)
The Deloitte report was more than 100 pages long and a summary version was sent to clubs. It made a number of recommendations and suggested the Sky deal, while not hugely out of kilter, may be marginally undervalued. The report also suggested the SPFL could generate revenues close to £50m a season when factoring in this broadcast renegotiation and other commercial changes.Deloitte outlined that there is work to be done on the brand but the immediate priority was to secure an improved broadcast agreement.
Several Premiership club sources tell The Athletic this was seen as an opportune time for Scottish football to extract more value from Sky due to the EFL rights being up for grabs in 2024.
If the EFL decide to sell the entirety of their rights to Norwegian-based company Viaplay — which has bought over Premier Sports and has already secured the EFL rights in ten countries — it would leave a gap in Sky’s catalogue of live sport rights.
Some figures interpreted this as giving the SPFL more bargaining power and clubs say that the security the deal provides is reassuring given the cost of living crisis and the potential for subscriber numbers to drop off, with Sky recording a loss of 255,000 subscribers for the second quarter of this year.
It is also noted that the recent renewal of Premier League rights did not increase in value-per-game for the first time ever — but that deal was seen as a coup by the Premier League given the landscape of the pandemic.
There are still 22.7 million Sky customers and the SPFL was part of a record for Sky Sports in October when over 14 million people tuned into the various sports offerings that day.
The issue for the SPFL in trying to create competition, however, is that BT Sport has moved away from live sports rights in the UK and instead chosen to pursue the European market by tying down all three European competitions until 2027, with other major leagues acquired and a venture with Discovery announced.
Potential disruptors into the market like Amazon Prime and Apple TV, which has just bought the rights to MLS for 10 years in a deal worth $250m (£213.6m) a year, are not banging on the door either.
There is a sense of loyalty to Sky as they played their part in ensuring £25 million of revenue continued to flow into Scottish football during the pandemic by allowing clubs to stream all games during lockdown.
They had exclusive rights and could have made it difficult but this allowed clubs to still sell season tickets by offering a replacement service.
While some clubs still believe that Sky could pay more for the rights, they are reluctant to go to auction or be seen to walk away from Sky for a third time.
The move to sell the rights to the BBC at the turn of the millennium (£46m over four years) and then the switch to Setanta Sport in 2008 (£125m over four years before they went bust) did not work out as planned and there is a feeling that it set the value of the rights back. Risking a revolt by Sky would not be welcome, although the opposition opinion to that is that Sky are paying what they want to due to a lack of competition.
The only other alternative would be to reject the offer from Sky and seek to build a direct-to-consumer type service, which was discussed in 2000 when SPL TV fell through.
“Clubs are nervous about new companies until they are proven,” says one club chief. “Sky were rejected once before as people thought they could do better but they lived to regret that with Setanta after they went bust and there is a bit of trepidation that remains.
“People point to other deals like Belgium, Denmark and Austria but they don’t share broadcasting territory with the biggest league in the world and aren’t fighting for coverage with the same broadcasters like we are.
“People can criticise the deal but what it comes down to is, ‘Have you got someone who is prepared to pay more money?’ And fundamentally we don’t.”
For Scottish clubs, unlike in countries like Denmark and Belgium who sell nearly all of their live games to several different broadcasters, there is a balance to be struck in maintaining the traditional 3pm Saturday slot.
The Scottish Premiership is the highest supported league per head of population across Europe so alienating match-going supporters by moving even more games to suit TV schedules could financially damage their core support, with gate receipts representing the highest proportion of income compared to every other league in Europe.
Clubs will have to decide in 2024 whether they wish to dislocate these five games from the Saturday afternoon schedule. It costs money to put together these productions and so it is being viewed as a metaphorical toe in the water when it comes to PPV.
Another potential breakthrough is that Deloitte is understood to have recommended that SPFL and SFA work closer together to maximise commercial value. The SPFL don’t have a large commercial arm currently but it is noted by some clubs that this was at the behest of the bigger clubs in years gone by, as they just wanted a league body that ran the league and that taking out extra costs simply reduced the revenue to be shared.
One of Deloitte’s main points was that the SPFL could improve their international rights. There are existing deals with dozens of countries across the globe but some of these only cover a small portion of the higher-value games and are not overly lucrative. Infront Sports & Media agency are understood to have the contract to broker these deals for the next two years. MP and Silva, co-owned by Leeds owner Andrea Radrizzani, previously bought up the rights and sub-sold them to different territories, which was worth millions. One Premiership club chief said there was widespread belief they had paid above the market value at the time.
There are plans now in the pipeline to start an umbrella organisation that brings together the men’s, women’s, youth and national teams so that it can be sold as a complete package.
From a marketing perspective, the leading brains behind it believe this makes Scottish football more attractive as the new agreement also gives the women’s game a deal of substance for the first time.
Whether Scottish football is undervalued or not has been a topic of contention for about as many years as football has been on the box but the new Sky deal represents incremental improvement and Deloitte’s findings could mark the first delve into a new chapter of Scottish football
I think Courts left of his own accord so not alot they could do in fairness.
Alot of Arabs were touting Big Duncan Ferguson on a radio phone in on sunday evening.
He did in the end but there were rumours they wanted to move on from him before then and they seemed happy to let him walk.
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@Little_Lord_Fauntleroy @Funtime @starryplough
Would the Dundee Utd job be one that could tempt Bradley away from Shamrock ?
Not a whole lot more he can achieve in Tallaght to be fair. I appreciate his son is having a tough time of things.
Stephen Kenny has shown that managing in Scotland can lead to bigger and better things.
Michael o Neill is free.
No