Contact:
Julian Mattocks
Phone: +43-1-81140-308
E-Mail: mattocks@pressetext.com
| Pressbox | 
|
London (pte032/08.02.2005/14:45) - The BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk has expressed an interest in bidding for live English Premiership football rights in two years time when Sky's exclusive deal comes to an end. As the Media Guardian http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk reports, Peter Salmon, the corporation's director of sport, believes the BBC should have its own dedicated sports channel. "The BBC can't not take an interest in a contract as substantial as Premier League live. Highlights remain important to us, but with live football being so ubiquitous, clearly the audience's relationship with the highlights is different," he said. However, Salmon admitted that Sky's financial power, paying more than 1 billion pounds (1.45 billion euros) for top-flight football, meant they were potentially unstoppable.
"Sky have very particular concerns. They want live domestic football. They want the clubs and the pubs to be full of people watching football and rugby on a weekend. Outside that there isn't a discernible Sky proposition," said Salmon. "They are really good at these things and they are unstoppable - given the bottomless pit of money that they have got - if something fits their business strategy. But there is an awful lot that they know and we know wouldn't work on Sky. Sky aren't part of the British public life in the same way the BBC is. The great big important sporting public moments for the moment belong on terrestrial television and particularly on the BBC," he added.
According to Salmon, he wanted to launch a dedicated BBC sports channel and he was frustrated by the limited amount of coverage he was able to give some sports on BBC1 and BBC2. "At the moment we are capped. I really feel the frustration of so many minor sports that are aggrieved that the BBC doesn't want them more than a handful of hours a year. Can you really build financial support through a sponsorship when you have that degree of coverage? In the course of the next license period, there should be a really good debate over the BBC and the diversity of its sports provision - including a specialist channel," said Salmon. BSkyB paid 1.02 billion pounds (1.48 billion euros) for live Premier League rights in a four-year deal which began last year and finishes at the end of the 2006/7 season.
(end)
|
|
