Has ITV got a future in football?

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

Football fans across the country are still coming to terms with the shock announcement on Saturday morning by BT Sport that has seen them nab exclusive rights to the major UEFA competitions from the start of the 2015-16 campaign.

UEFA awarded the rights exclusively to the new satellite TV channel that has only been on the air in the UK since the start of August. The deal will see BT screen 350 matches from the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, paying £897m over three years, over half the money of the current contract.

That contract was shared between BSkyB and ITV and was signed back in March 2008. Both companies were disappointed by the news but insisted that they weren’t going to pay over the odds for the premier competitions in club football.

While BSkyB can soothe over this setback with its prime coverage of the Barclays Premier League, alongside other football portfolio including the Football League, the Capital One Cup and La Liga football from Spain, where does the news leave ITV? Do they have a sustainable future in football in the coming years?

It is another blow for the terrestrial broadcaster which after next season will have no rights whatsoever to club football on a live basis. ITV has been the home of free-to-air football for several years now and took pride and place in having many of the key football matches live and free for its viewers. In July, they lost the FA Cup contract in a joint bid by BT Sport and the BBC, meaning that this season’s edition will be the sixth and final season of showing live rights – beginning by screening Northampton Town’s narrow 2-1 victory over Bishop’s Stortford in the first round on Sunday.

Now they have lost the unique selling identity that had set the standard for their sports programming. ITV has been a partner of the UEFA competitions since 1993 and it was one of the longest partnerships in terms of a broadcaster/competition agreement. ITV has screened every single Champions League final since 1994, the majority of the UEFA Super Cup finals in that time and many matches from the Europa League and its former competition, the UEFA Cup. Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and recently, Manchester City fans will have got used to ITV’s live coverage of the crunch matches in the past two decades.

The last few years have been difficult for ITV in general, with falling advertising revenues and viewing figures that have dipped, especially for sporting coverage. They exited their sound Formula One contract in 2008 in a bid to keep the Champions League. Now five years on, it doesn’t look such a smart move, especially with the F1 fans that now have to accept the rights will be exclusive to Sky Sports within the next 18 months. While they will be showing French Open tennis, the Tour de France, the 2015 Rugby World Cup and the British Touring Car Championship, ITV’s sporting portfolio is starting to look rather thin on the ground.

Some of their main presenters have now got some tough decisions to make. ITV (football ident pictured) will still remain the home of England internationals until 2018 at the absolute latest but that is it and it will be interesting to see what main anchor Adrian Chiles does, along with chief pundit Lee Dixon and commentator Clive Tydlesey. I would be surprised to see all three sticking with just live England games for the next five years once the conclusion of the 2014-15 season takes its course.

BT’s bombshell has shaken up the market and will put Sky under pressure when it comes to the bidding for the next Premier League TV live contracts. Already a joint partner, BT has shown it has the money power to match Sky and I don’t think they will be going away in a hurry. Unlike Setanta Sports, ITV Digital and ESPN, BT Sport is here to stay.

The football fan is starting to lose out. While BT has promised in its agreement with UEFA that they will show the final of each competition live on free-to-air, as well as each British participating club at least once per season, it still isn’t good news. On an average season for the normal neutral that doesn’t have access to pay for Sky, ITV would show nearly 50 live matches of European football on its main channel or on ITV4. From 2015-16, that number will go down to around 8 live free matches. Football, like many other sports is becoming a pay-per-view service and it won’t be long before there won’t be any sport free to watch. The market is becoming quite loft-sided. The BBC might have the FA Cup back from next season but prefer to focus on highlights nowadays. Channel 4 have no interest in getting into football bidding, whilst Channel Five have completely disappeared since pulling out of its Europa League deal at the end of the 2011-12 season. ITV is more likely now to pump the money it will be saving from the lack of live football into more gritty dramas or revive failing shows like the X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – both who arguably have had their best days behind them. For football nuts, this new deal with BT is bad news, unless you can afford to subscribe to the service.

While ITV will still remain the home of England football for the next five years, it is no longer a serious player in the football market when it comes to live rights. Adam Crozier, a former chief executive of the FA, is now head of ITV’s programming and now has a big decision to make. He either needs to centre football for the channel on a quality highlights service or scrap the sport altogether. The future of live football on terrestrial television is looking very bleak now and I reckon that by 2020, if you want to see the nation’s top sport live, you will have to pay for it, simple as that.