lost that loving feeling - ITV Digital

In the early nineties, 10 clubs regarded as the biggest in England met with chiefs from Sky television, FA and Football League executives and the major sponsors in the game at the time.

They met again and again and again, and the eventual result was the formation of the Premier League - 22 teams competing for a new title with the exclusive satellite coverage to boot.

The benefit for the clubs was the massive amounts Sky were prepared to offer for broadcasting rights. The benefits to Sky was a flagship service to attract millions of viewers to their subscriber services.

At they also swallowed up the rights to show Football League games, creating a monopoly in English football coverage that was to bring the company millions.

Eight years later, new companies began to challenge Sky’s dominance with the opportunities new Digital technology present. ITV Digital, known as ON Digital at the time, battled with Sky and eventually secured a portion of their monopoly. In a furious bidding war they won the rights to broadcast some Premier League games and all Nationwide League games, as well as highlights for all English divisions.

The new arrangement kicked in at the beginning of this season, but as we reach the end of it, ITV Digital have been turned over the administrators and their glorious rebellion against Sky’s empire has ended in dismal, embarrassing failure.

£350m is what ITV paid for rights to broadcast the Football League. But just one year into the deal and the company still owe £180m and the coffers are bare.

A miscalculation of Titanic stakes meant that the expected audiences didn’t come and vital advertisers stayed away. The company are current losing money at the rate of a million a day and viewing figures have been so low that at one point it would have been cheaper to send each of its viewers to a Bolton Wanderers-Nottingham Forest game by taxi, put them up in a four-star hotel for the night and then drive them home, than pay the £1m costs to broadcast the game.

The result of which was an implosion at ITV Digital as it’s joint-owners, Carlton and Granada cut their losses and jumped ship, leaving the company in limbo with no money to pay what it owes to the clubs and the league.

The clubs themselves will no doubt suffer the consequences as much of their revenues comes from selling TV rights. Many clubs are threatening to sue Carlton and Granada as they now face massive wage bills but don’t have any means of paying them.

Meanwhile, ITV Digital’s service continues as normal until a new deal can be bartered out. It is certain that once rights have been renegotiated, there will be considerably less money involved, leaving clubs in a very precarious position.

The reasons for the collapse of ITV Digital are manifold: The over-estimation by ITV Digital as to the value of broadcast rights of seemingly unappealing Nationwide League matches, the greed by Football League bosses and club chairmen in not only accepting, but banking much of their future and stability, on such an unreasonable figure, the poor service offered by ITV Digital that put many potential and vital subscribers off, and of course, the danger of pitting a new company and new technology up against the well-established Sky and its familiar platform.

ITV Digital bosses will be left somewhat bemused though as, essentially, they followed the rulebook. That is, the rulebook written by Sky: “spend masses on securing exclusive rights and use said rights to flagship your service. Recoup the initial spending on subscriptions and watch the advertising profits role in.”

But they missed out on one vital factor - Sky were not only present at the meetings (as you would expect, they were already showing Football League games) but they were instrumental in the formation of Premier League. In turn, this meant the restructuring of the existing Football League.

So Sky were not only trying to market the product, they had tailored it to match their needs. They had created a glamorous league, invested enough money to attract numerous foreign stars, and it all came with the Sky brand attached.

When ITV tried to repeat the trick, they may well have got the branding and money right (we shall never know), but they were essentially marketing someone else’s product.

That product - Nationwide League Football - has since proven not to be all that hot after all. Not nearly as glamorous as the top flight, and certainly not as rich in quality, ITV would never be able to repeat what Sky did with the Premiership.

There is an audience, but it is not as universal as the Premiership’s. In fact, ITV Digital soon found that the only people interested in watching a particular game were supporters of the clubs involved, and they generally preferred to be at the game itself, rather than stuck behind a TV screen.

The grit and sheer bloody-mindedness against the odds that defines the lower leagues does not cross over onto the screen as easily as the glamour and skill exhibited in the Premier League.

But with ITV Digital having shown everyone how not to do it, and Sky the exact opposite, the Nationwide League rights are once again open to bidders and the only hope of saving the many clubs now facing financial peril as a direct result, is for the Football League to re-structure itself just as the Premiership founders took it upon themselves to form the current hierarchy.

The desire is there - six clubs were involved in talks last November, united in their craving to escape the financially restricting First Division and form some sort of ‘Premiership II’. Although the plans were widely condemned, there were harsh words said about the secretive manner in which talks took place, rather than the actual concept of reforming the league.

Many parties have recommended that the way forward is in fact to revert to the past and have regional leagues replace the current Second and Third Divisions. Other suggestions have been to form a joint league with the also-troubled Scottish lower divisions.

Whatever the end result of this is and however the restructuring takes place, the clubs in the Nationwide League who are on the brink of disbandment will be praying that, unlike the last deal, new TV negotiations will not only lead to a more realistic and sustainable price tag on broadcasting rights, but a more realistic and sustainable structuring of the leagues themselves.

There have been terrific imbalances in the game since the formation of the Premier League and it is only now that they are coming to the fore. The Football League needs to address those imbalances and give its own football a share of the glamour and prestige currently monopolized by Premiership clubs.

Unless they can find a way of making the leagues more marketable and appealing to viewers, then they will never be able to secure a television deal that offers the financial security the clubs need and the Football League will disappear into obscurity.