In what is likely a bout of saber rattling, Ian Ayre has stated that England’s big clubs should sell their international TV rights individually. As Villa fans we can all agree that the last thing English football needs is for the rich to get richer. Competitiveness was traditionally one of the hallmarks of English football, and it has been diminished since the advent of the Premier League and Champions League.
Ayre claims that English clubs are at a competitive disadvantage compared to Real Madrid and Barcelona who currently sell their TV rights individually. While the big English clubs would benefit in the short term, it would likely come with a long-term cost. The EPL dwarfs La Liga and Serie A in international revenue in no small part because even now the Premier League is more competitive than its counterparts in Spain and Italy. I’m not sure how many people in Thailand or Hong Kong want to watch the football equivalent of the Harlem Globtrotters every week.
Coming from a club owned by Fenway Sports Group (FSG) this is not suprising. Tom Werner cited the ability to market Liverpool outside of the local area as a refreshing departure from Major League Baseball (MLB). In MLB, each team has a protected territory where it can exclusively operate. Additionally, all of America is carved up into television territories where teams can exclusively televise their games (with the exception of national broadcasts). International broadcast rights are shared equally among all 30 MLB clubs.
MLB, concerned about growing disparities in revenue, has sought to ensure any new revenue sources are shared equally among its 30 clubs. All online revenue generated by MLB’s online arm, MLBAM, whose MLB At Bat app is the highest grossing app in the iTunes store, is shared. In stark contrast, almost all merchandise revenue is shared. In 2007, FSG’s Boston Red Sox paid a $51.1m fee to the Seibu Lions for Diasuke Matsuzaka, the preeminent pitcher in Japan. After acquiring the pitcher, the Red Sox only saw 1/30th of the millions generated from sales of Matsuzaka shirts.
Compared to baseball, football is the wild west. FSG is already airing rebroadcasts of EPL matches on its New England Sports Network (NESN). Although they can’t broadcast Red Sox games nationally on NESN, FSG is trying to have TV providers in the US carry NESN nationally. By going national, NESN will generate more revenue for each and every new household in the US it reaches. For FSG, going national with only pregame and postgame coverage for the Red Sox and the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League to households outside of New England that isn’t overly enticing.
If FSG also carried live Liverpool matches that it could broadcast exclusively throughout the US without restriction perhaps that would help FSG take NESN nationwide. I may have overstated FSG’s desire to market Liverpool in America. John W. Henry has stated publicly that Asia is more of a priority, but this is just one example of how they could leverage the Liverpool brand internationally. Given the opportunity the other big clubs in England would leverage their brands in a similar manner.
I’d imagine such a move would have to be approved by all of the clubs in the Premier League. It is difficult to imagine any clubs outside of the top five agreeing to this. Going forward, the Premier League needs to share more revenues among its member clubs and not less. In the long run, the more competitive the Premier League is the more compelling of a TV property it is both domestically and internationally.
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