FA Cup: BBC to show live matches from 2014-15 season

[Red Gunner]

FA Cup: BBC to show live matches from 2014-15 season

The BBC has secured a four-year shared rights deal with BT Sport that will see both broadcasters show the FA Cup from the start of the 2014-15 season.

BBC One will broadcast the competition, with live streaming available across online, mobile and tablet devices.

"Bringing the FA Cup back to the BBC was something I really wanted to do," said BBC director general Tony Hall.

"I am so pleased that we have achieved it for football fans everywhere," Hall added.

"There is something very special about big national moments on the BBC and the FA Cup should absolutely be one of them.

"The Olympics, Wimbledon and Glastonbury have shown how our audiences love it when we put the full weight of all our services on TV, radio and digital behind covering these events in depth and in ways no-one else can.

"Working closely with the FA I believe we will change the way we view the FA Cup forever."

The deal was announced at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday.

Details of how many games will be shown live by the BBC have yet to be released. Radio coverage of the FA Cup also continues on BBC Radio 5 live until 2018.

Gary Lineker, who will lead the BBC presentation and was involved in the pitch to win the rights, said at Wembley: "It is terrific news. We have the European Championships, World Cup, Confederations Cup and we've got the Women's Euros 2013.

"These are summer events. In between Match of the Day is great with highlights every week, but this gives us regular, big live football on the BBC right throughout. It is so important and, vitally, fills a gap for us.

"It is just a great competition and it's great to have it back on the BBC.

"It will be across all platforms, across the board. We can deliver a big audience. It is the perfect fit."

BBC head of TV sport, Philip Bernie, said: "It is a wonderful fit between the BBC and the FA Cup - all that tradition, all that romance, all that drama.

"We're thrilled. We think it will provide great value for licence fee payers in the way the whole narrative of the FA Cup unfolds. We've had to work hard at it but we think it is something the BBC should have.

"It just shows how important sport is to the BBC and how those really big national events that sport brings, bringing the entire nation together, are so vital to make the BBC feel absolutely part of the nation's fabric and this is a prime example."

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Retail said: "BT Sport made a determined joint bid to retain the FA Cup rights because we believe it is one of the truly great club football competitions.

"We are thrilled to bring our viewers the incredible stories of passion, and victories against all odds, that pepper the history of the competition."

New FA chairman Greg Dyke said the FA Cup final will continue to kick off at 17:15 BST, due to impressive viewing figures for recent finals with that start time.

"The final will continue to be held in late afternoon, which is where it's been moved to," Dyke declared.

"I'm certainly happy with that because if you look at the viewing figures for the past two FA Cup finals they were much bigger than they would have been had the match kicked off at 3pm. The world changed and we had to change with it."

Dyke, the BBC's director general from 2000 to 2004, added: "I would like to thank everyone who expressed an interest in these FA Cup broadcast rights and congratulate the BBC and BT Sport on their successful tenders.

"Their valuable support underlines what a great competition the FA Cup is and how important it is to the sporting calendar.

"ITV have done a tremendous job in recent years and we look forward to their fantastic continued support of the England team.

"The BBC is obviously an organisation I know very well but I don't think anyone would dispute that their name goes hand in hand with some of the most famous FA Cup moments of yesteryear.

"We're delighted that the competition is back on their channels, not just through television but with significant online presence as well."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23339424

-----

BBC and BT Sport to share FA Cup TV rights

The world's oldest knockout cup competition is to return to the BBC after an absence of seven years, as part of a deal for the FA Cup in which it will share the rights with new entrant BT Sport.

The contract, which runs for four years from 2014/15, means that FA Cup ties will be shared between the BBC and BT while ITV retains the rights to England's home matches.

Added together, the FA's income for the FA Cup and England's home matches is believed to be approaching the high watermark of the £425m paid by ITV and Setanta in 2007.

Director general Tony Hall said the deal had put the FA Cup "back where it belongs" on the BBC, which will have first pick of the best matches in each round.

"What has interested me in my first few months here are the lessons of the Olympics in how you bring all the services around the big event, whether that be Wimbledon or Glastonbury," said Hall.

"When you poll licence fee payers they say they want the big events to be on the BBC. The FA Cup is one of those big national moments. Working closely with the FA I believe we will change the way we view the FA Cup forever."

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said: "BT Sport made a determined joint bid to retain the FA Cup rights because we believe it is one of the truly great club football competitions."

When ITV chairman Michael Grade engineered a £425m coup with now defunct pay TV broadcaster Setanta to snatch the rights from the BBC and Sky in 2007, it caused fury at the BBC. But ITV later had to admit it had overpaid, while Setanta went bust.

The BBC has only now returned to the table and the emergence of BT Sport as a serious challenger to Sky allowed the Football Association to engineer a more competitive auction this time around.

The difficulties surrounding the broadcast rights for the FA Cup – when Setanta went under ESPN stepped in, only to exit the market itself when it lost its Premier League package – have compounded the issues involved in maintaining its relevancy.

The FA has periodically considered radical changes to the FA Cup format but claimed last season that more subtle moves, including the controversial decision to kick off the final at 5.15pm, had helped reinvigorate it. The teatime kick-off is likely to stay under the new deal.

In a twist of fate, the unveiling of the new TV rights deal was the first official public event for new FA chairman Greg Dyke, a former BBC director general. Although he had little to do with the negotiations, when he was at the BBC he was vocal about the need for it to bid for major sporting events.

The FA Cup rights were split from the England matches for the first as a result of Uefa's decision to sell the rights for competitive qualifying matches centrally.

ITV agreed a £100m deal to cover England's competitive home internationals live until 2018 earlier this year.

"What's interesting from our audience research is that they expect the big events to be on the BBC. But not at any price – which is why the BT element of the deal is important," said Hall.

Gary Lineker, the Match of the Day presenter who is likely to host the BBC's FA Cup coverage, said the BBC's recapture of the rights would be broadly welcomed by licence fee payers.

"It's right for the BBC to try its best, in difficult times when you going up against operators, to bid for what it can," he said.

"The BBC has consistently shown what it can do for sport over a long period of time. The Open, Wimbledon, World Cups, European Championships. We'll do this competition justice."

Lineker also hit back at critics of Match of the Day's style. "It's still hugely popular, hugely watched and our figures continue to rise season on season. That's where your answer lies. Our graphics are state of the art, we're always looking at ways of doing it differently," he said.

"The only criticism we tend to get is that there's not enough analysis – but if we started showing analysis instead of action, we have to get the right balance. We've got good people, great pundits and we're looking at bringing new people in all the time. In terms of pundits, it's a nightmare job – one man's pundit is another man's poison. You either love them or hate them."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/ju ... -tv-rights

[LewisT92]

Thank God.. No more Adrian Chiles

[mcdowell42]

Oh great we can watch Wenger sacrifice the fa cup on a different channel in pursuit of the CL

[Ryanswannell]

Thank God.. No more Adrian Chiles

Or that misersble fecker Roy Keane

[falkirk goon]

Oh great we can watch Wenger sacrifice the fa cup on a different channel in pursuit of the CL

This is what i thought aswell it will only concern us up till the 5th round(at the latest) i hate what our club has become

[Red Gunner]

More good football TV news:

Fifa loses free-to-air World Cup TV battle

Fifa and Uefa have lost an appeal against a European ruling that the World Cup and Euro Championships must be shown on free-to-air TV in the UK.

In 2011, the European General Court said the UK could keep the events on a list of "protected" events of national sporting interest broadcast for free.

It means the two tournaments cannot be sold exclusively to pay-TV firms.

Fifa and Uefa had appealed, after saying they could not sell the events fairly for their real value.

But the European Court of Justice - Europe's Supreme Court - has now said the original decision in the General Court (formerly Court of First Instance) in 2011 was correct.

Big money

The BBC and ITV had already secured the rights to broadcast the football World Cup finals in 2014, and they were guaranteed of being shown free-to-air.

But there had been fears that moves towards a pay-TV model would have been in place in time for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, should Fifa and Uefa have won their case.

The court said it "dismisses the appeals brought by Fifa and Uefa in their entirety".

Fifa earned a minimum of $2bn (£1,3bn) in TV and media rights deals for the South Africa 2010 World Cup, and Uefa makes hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of its TV rights to the European Championships.

Pay-TV rights for football are currently big business, as seen by the huge sums paid by BT Sports and Sky in the latest Premier League TV deal, which kicks off in the forthcoming 2013/14 season.

BT has spent £738m over three years for the rights to 38 live matches a season. and Sky paid £2.3bn for 116 matches a season.

'Major importance'

Even if Fifa had won its case, World Cup finals games featuring England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would have remained free to watch in the UK, as would the opening games, semi-finals and the final.

But it was the other dozens of games featuring non-UK teams that Fifa was disputing - and had argued that matches such as these should not be shown for free in the UK.

Fifa and Uefa had argued that the current set-up interfered with their ability to sell television rights at the best commercial price they could get in the marketplace.

However, the UK argued that all the 64 World Cup finals matches and 31 European Championship matches were an important part of the list of national sporting "crown jewels", that have to be made available to the whole population to watch on terrestrial television.

And the court agreed, saying that European states were able to select broadcast events, "which they deem to be of major importance for society" and show them for free.

Otherwise it "would deprive a substantial proportion of the public of the possibility of following those events on free television".

'Rebuffed'

Belgium was also successful in keeping the rights to World Cup and European Championship matches on free-to-air services.

Despite the more than two-year wait for the result of the appeal by Fifa and Uefa, many experts had expected the decision to go against them.

"The result means that Uefa and Fifa have now reached the end of their European Court journey," said Daniel Geey, a TV sports rights expert at Field Fisher Waterhouse law firm.

"Their aim was to try and secure concessions to market some of their World Cup and Euro matches to pay-TV channels in the UK and Belgium with the ultimate aim of maximising their revenues.

"The European courts have rebuffed such an approach."

The case has been working its way through the European courts for the past five years, with Fifa and Uefa lodging legal papers just before the Euro 2008 football championships.

In its ruling the court said it was "for the [European] member states alone to determine the events which are of major importance" to their viewing publics.

It also said that all the matches in the final stages of the World Cup and Euros "actually attracted sufficient attention from the public to form part of an event of major importance".

The court also pointed out that the tournaments "in their entirety, have always been very popular among the general public and not only viewers who generally follow football matches on television".

[SteveO 35]

Oh great we can watch Wenger sacrifice the fa cup on a different channel in pursuit of the CL

This is what i thought aswell it will only concern us up till the 5th round(at the latest) i hate what our club has become

You mean that you'd rather win a real trophy rather than glorious 2nd leg failure at the hands of one the big European clubs. Shame on you man.....you need some Arsenalization in your life !