Liverpool threaten breakaway from Premier League's TV rights deal

[Section_31]

Sec, there has been a dominance in British football for years. It's only the wealth of a couple of individuals who have broken it.

 

Not to the extent it is now, nowhere near. We dominated football through luck really, luck in how we managed to produce some of the greatest managers who ever lived, but the other sides could have broken our hold at any time if they'd got their shit together. The mancs have always had a significant amount more money to spend than us but again, that's not 'all' that kept them on top, what kept them on top - and returned them to the top in the face of insurmountable financial competition - was their manager. He got their youth setup ticking right all those years ago and bought well, bought players we could have afforded if we'd wanted.

 

You just can't compare that situation to what you have now. You have a seemingly ever shrinking pool of world class players who just dictate everything and who all 'dream' of playing for 'top team who fan have tattoo', in other words, earning a quarter mil a week. It's a load of shite and it's affecting the average football fan more than it ever has. People aren't stupid but most things are subliminal, people know this particular game is rigged pretty much forever now and it won't take long to sink in with falling attendences etc.

[Kevin D]

Good news and it's about time, in my opinion, it should benefit the club in the long-term, certainly it would stop the club desperately seeking revenue in other places, like ticket prices. I'm not at all concerned with the morality of it and much less with it compromising the integrity of the league. That anybody can talk about the latter with a straight face after 1992 is remarkable.

 

Perhaps if they hadn't stood back complicity when the club was on the risk of financial oblivion(a deal, it should be noted, they share blame in), then I'd feel a certain moral obligation. As it is, they can all fuck off. We have to look after ourselves.

[Major Tom]

So you're not a fan of La Liga?

 

It's a two team league. It's a joke.

[Major Tom]

Good news and it's about time, in my opinion, it should benefit the club in the long-term, .

 

How would it benefit us long term?

[Section_31]

It's a two team league. It's a joke.

 

Correct. I got a brief twinge when Vallecano went one up against Madrid but then they ended up getting inevitably murdered by the 400 grand a week brigade. Scottish football on steds.

 

One thing is an absolute fact, if football is still around in 50 years, Madrid and Barca will still be competiting for everything in Spain, and I can't fathom why anyone thinks that's anything other than shit. Stagnation is the same as decline.

[satansmutt]

It's a two team league. It's a joke.

 

since 2004-05 only 2 teams have won the premier league and since the premier league was formed only 4 teams have won the league and one of them was blackburn who only won it once.

So la liga is no more a joke than our league

[usernameunknown]

since 2004-05 only 2 teams have won the premier league and since the premier league was formed only 4 teams have won the league and one of them was blackburn who only won it once.

So la liga is no more a joke than our league

 

Yeah, I dont get this La Liga is evil, Premier League is ace stuff. Before the season started you know who's in the title race in both leagues (Barca, Real v Man Utd, Man City, maybe Chelsea), know who's in the CL race (Valencia, Villarreal, Sevila, Malaga v Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, maybe Chelsea) and know who's in relegation trouble. Not much difference really apart from Real and Barca are a bit better than our best.

[Xherdan]

I read this about 10/15 years ago and it made me embarrassed to be associated with Liverpool: The Football Business: Fair Game in the '90s? Mainstream sport: Amazon.co.uk: David Conn: Books

 

This idea is even worse.

 

People who are laughing at this and saying 'Who cares about Norwich/Wigan/Stoke' etc really need a look at themselves.

 

Just because we didn't have the clout to sufficiently exploit our name across the globe pre-90s isn't anybody's fault but our own. This isn't the way to make up for our prior diffidence.

 

Corporate greed, and not 'Liverpool'. Just like the Premier League wasn't.

 

I am against it 100%.

 

 

The sport has changed significantly since the days of Shankly or even since the eighties. Football has become the worlds number 1 sport in an era of global economic growth. This whole concept of brands only began in the 90's really when clubs started to realise that significant wads of cash could be made by sticking your club crest on pretty much anything. While I agree that the club wasnt run particular well we cannot be critisized for not capitalising on our fame when we were looking at signifcantly different global economic conditions.

 

My opinion on the TV rights issue is similar to many others here, it would make sense for LFC but would be a disaster for the Premier League. Just look at the state of the rest of the clubs in La Liga including Valencia and Atleti, two of the best supported clubs in that League aside from Madrid and Barca, both financial basket cases funded by various banks, forced into selling key assets to continue meeting their wage bills. Any change in this rights deal would force clubs into 'donig a Leeds' in the hope of earning success and better TV rights as a result. These are not sustainable business models and we see a lot of clubs failing.

 

IN saying that it is a system which needs to be reviewed. We get more viewers than most other teams in the Premiership and this should be acknowledged.

[Major Tom]

Yeah, I dont get this La Liga is evil, Premier League is ace stuff. Before the season started you know who's in the title race in both leagues (Barca, Real v Man Utd, Man City, maybe Chelsea), know who's in the CL race (Valencia, Villarreal, Sevila, Malaga v Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, maybe Chelsea) and know who's in relegation trouble. Not much difference really apart from Real and Barca are a bit better than our best.

 

La Liga isn't evil, it's just uncompetitive and, as a consequence, shit. In my view anyway.

[Timão]

Do we want LFC to be as good as it can be on the field? Or just competitive?

 

Any money we can make from tv deals would be rightfully ours, this isn't the same as being bought by some Sheikh and having money ploughed in.

 

How the fuck is anything 'rightfully ours'?

 

The last couple of years we have 'competed' with Stoke and the likes for the glory of Europa League football. We have won nothing for 5 years and last season saw our lowest crowds for over a decade in some games.

 

Nothing is 'rightfully ours', we have to earn it and that's it.

 

I just cannot believe some of the arrogance on this thread from LIVERPOOL fans who would no doubt tell us that Shanks is a legend etc yet completely ignore everything he stood for.

 

The irony of a FC St Pauli flag next to your name obviously also passes you by, St Pauli being THE most leftwing club in German football who say 'no' to more money than any other German club because they do not want to comercialise the club too much.

 

I despair at times. Football really is fucked.

[BenR_]

since 2004-05 only 2 teams have won the premier league and since the premier league was formed only 4 teams have won the league and one of them was blackburn who only won it once.

So la liga is no more a joke than our league

 

That's not what this is about. It's about La Liga winners usually finishing the season with almost 100 points. It's about the 2nd placed team regularly finishing around 20pts from the 3rd.

 

Yes, you may well claim that this situation exists because Barca\Real are much better than England's top teams and you'd have a point, but then who's to say the mancs for instance wouldn't be as good as those 2 if they could negotiate their TV rights deals themselves?

[usernameunknown]

How the fuck is anything 'rightfully ours'?

 

The last couple of years we have 'competed' with Stoke and the likes for the glory of Europa League football. We have won nothing for 5 years and last season saw our lowest crowds for over a decade in some games.

 

Nothing is 'rightfully ours', we have to earn it and that's it.

 

I just cannot believe some of the arrogance on this thread from LIVERPOOL fans who would no doubt tell us that Shanks is a legend etc yet completely ignore everything he stood for.

 

The irony of a FC St Pauli flag next to your name obviously also passes you by, St Pauli being THE most leftwing club in German football who say 'no' to more money than any other German club because they do not want to comercialise the club too much.

 

I despair at times. Football really is fucked.

 

Did you even read his post properly?

 

I despair more at your "lets be plucky little Liverpool" rather than trying to win.

[Faustus]

Yeah, fuck the small clubs.

 

Fuck the likes of Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town, Derby County and Wimbledon- small clubs who achieved varying levels of success in the days when the gate receipts were shared and it was possible to compete in the upper echeleons through shrewd management; the nack of being able to spot a gem of a player and having that ability to exact every last little drop of ability from the players you had in front of you.

 

The incredibly sad thing now is that clubs of that ilk will never, ever be able to achieve what they had in the past through the same means. The formation of the Premier League put the knife to the throat of this very notion and individual TV rights would drain the blood.

 

Everton, the Mancs, Spurs, Arsenal and ourselves had the temerity in the late 80s to ask "why should we share a piece of the pie with some bumnuts from the fourth tier?" I'll fucking tell you why- because it's a sport. It's not a fucking business. It's a form of escapism; a relief from that shit job you despise or that nagging wife you've shacked up with. It's peoples' emotions you're toying with. Cut through the tribal bullshit and posturing and you'll find that we're not so different as football fans. We all want the same things. We all want a stable, well run club, we all want success and, most of all, we all want to take pride in our team. Unfortunately, the goalposts were not just moved when the Premier League came into being, they were fucking swindled and moved onto another playing field. It closed the door on the dreams of fans who clung to that hope of emulating the achievement of smaller clubs not too disimilar from themselves.

 

It's rampant capitalism in it's most vulgar form. The rich get richer, the poor stay fucked. You can dream on if you think it's going to change.

 

Football changed for the worse in this country when the Premier League came into being and individual TV rights would just mean that it gets a whole lot uglier.

[usernameunknown]

That's not what this is about. It's about La Liga winners usually finishing the season with almost 100 points.

 

 

Wouldnt call twice the usual.

[Major Tom]

Yeah, fuck the small clubs.

 

Fuck the likes of Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town, Derby County and Wimbledon- small clubs who achieved varying levels of success in the days when the gate receipts were shared and it was possible to compete in the upper echeleons through shrewd management; the nack of being able to spot a gem of a player and having that ability to exact every last little drop of ability from the players you had in front of you.

 

The incredibly sad thing now is that clubs of that ilk will never, ever be able to achieve what they had in the past through the same means. The formation of the Premier League put the knife to the throat of this very notion and individual TV rights would drain the blood.

 

Everton, the Mancs, Spurs, Arsenal and ourselves had the temerity in the late 80s to ask "why should we share a piece of the pie with some bumnuts from the fourth tier?" I'll fucking tell you why- because it's a sport. It's not a fucking business. It's a form of escapism; a relief from that shit job you despise or that nagging wife you've shacked up with. It's peoples' emotions you're toying with. Cut through the tribal bullshit and posturing and you'll find that we're not so different as football fans. We all want the same things. We all want a stable, well run club, we all want success and, most of all, we all want to take pride in our team. Unfortunately, the goalposts were not just moved when the Premier League came into being, they were fucking swindled and moved onto another playing field. It closed the door on the dreams of fans who clung to that hope of emulating the achievement of smaller clubs not too disimilar from themselves.

 

It's rampant capitalism in it's most vulgar form. The rich get richer, the poor stay fucked. You can dream on if you think it's going to change.

 

Football changed for the worse in this country when the Premier League came into being and individual TV rights would just mean that it gets a whole lot uglier.

 

Amen.

[kelster]

Maybe some sort of halfway house would be appropriate. Keep it as it is domestically and share the TV revenue equally. As far as international markets are concerned, then let each club create its own market.

[Section_31]

Yeah, fuck the small clubs.

 

Fuck the likes of Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town, Derby County and Wimbledon- small clubs who achieved varying levels of success in the days when the gate receipts were shared and it was possible to compete in the upper echeleons through shrewd management; the nack of being able to spot a gem of a player and having that ability to exact every last little drop of ability from the players you had in front of you.

 

The incredibly sad thing now is that clubs of that ilk will never, ever be able to achieve what they had in the past through the same means. The formation of the Premier League put the knife to the throat of this very notion and individual TV rights would drain the blood.

 

Everton, the Mancs, Spurs, Arsenal and ourselves had the temerity in the late 80s to ask "why should we share a piece of the pie with some bumnuts from the fourth tier?" I'll fucking tell you why- because it's a sport. It's not a fucking business. It's a form of escapism; a relief from that shit job you despise or that nagging wife you've shacked up with. It's peoples' emotions you're toying with. Cut through the tribal bullshit and posturing and you'll find that we're not so different as football fans. We all want the same things. We all want a stable, well run club, we all want success and, most of all, we all want to take pride in our team. Unfortunately, the goalposts were not just moved when the Premier League came into being, they were fucking swindled and moved onto another playing field. It closed the door on the dreams of fans who clung to that hope of emulating the achievement of smaller clubs not too disimilar from themselves.

 

It's rampant capitalism in it's most vulgar form. The rich get richer, the poor stay fucked. You can dream on if you think it's going to change.

 

Football changed for the worse in this country when the Premier League came into being and individual TV rights would just mean that it gets a whole lot uglier.

 

Top post mate.

[TheHitman]

Tearing up the pooled TV deal is a recipe for the rich to get richer | David Conn | Football | The Guardian

 

 

"So, in relaxed, celebratory mood a year on from the court battle which ousted Tom Hicks and George Gillett from Liverpool and installed new Americans, Fenway Sports Group, as the club's owners, the managing director, Ian Ayre, mused out loud about breaking up the Premier League TV deal. That is the one element of clubs' income which they share; everything else, the tickets (prices raised to £45 this season to sit on the Kop), replica shirts at £40, advertising and sponsorship, the clubs all keep to themselves.

 

The Premier League, of course, was itself formed as a breakaway in 1992, by Liverpool and the other First Division clubs, from having to share the forthcoming satellite TV millions with the clubs in the other three divisions of the Football League. In its 20th season, the Premier League has managed to keep its own TV‑sharing formula intact, the one mechanism which operates to at least give the Boltons a chance of not embarrassing themselves at Old Trafford, even if all clubs outside four, at most, have no chance of expecting to challenge for the title.

 

The domestic TV deal – the £2.1bn from 2010‑13 which Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB and ESPN pay for the live pay-TV stranglehold, and the BBC for bite-sized highlights – is shared 50% equally, 25% according to where a club finishes in the table, and 25% to clubs every time they are on live. It favours the big clubs, but not mountainously; Manchester United were paid £42.4m last season, while Blackpool, who received the lowest, made exactly half that, £21.2m.

 

Overseas rights have always been shared equally, and while in 1992 they were almost nonexistent, the current deal, reflecting the game's global popularity, especially in the Middle and Far East, is worth £1.4bn over the next three years. So last season Blackpool received the same as United: £17.9m.

 

It was only a matter of time before the big clubs would start to challenge this last vestige of sharing, as they did in the 1980s, removing, with the threat of the breakaway they ultimately did anyway, the sharing of gate receipts which had been core to the Football League's competition since it was founded in 1888.

 

It is a bitter pill, but not that surprising, that the club which has articulated this appetite is one of the four major clubs owned by American buyers. All of them own sports franchises in the US, where their sports operate very strict systems of sharing money, including ticket money, merchandising, TV rights, in fact all revenues. In Major League Baseball, in which Fenway owns the Boston Red Sox, gross revenues are taxed and shared quite equally – although the details are not publicly disclosed – and there is a draft system, specifically designed to ensure that the Red Sox, New York Yankees and other major teams do not relentlessly dominate and the competitions become predictable.

The American buyers for Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United in particular have been attracted into a sport which, unlike their own, now has a global following on television and the internet, from which they believe they can ultimately make a great deal of money. The Premier League also allows them to keep so much more of the money they make than US sports do, as financial dominance here does concentrate sporting success in the trophy cabinets of fewer clubs.

 

In 19 years only Blackburn Rovers, once, through its momentarily greater spending power, Arsenal three times, and Chelsea via an oligarch's fortune, have interrupted the dominance of United, the highest-earning club throughout, despite the debts loaded on by the Glazer takeover. A football story like Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest miracle, winning the league in their first season promoted in 1978 then the European Cup twice, is now impossible, because financial inequality buys too great a sporting inequality. Manchester City's move from ninth in the Premier League in 2008 to third last season was achieved after the spending of £600m by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi – it takes one of the world's richest men, not an inspirational football manager alone, to break into English football's elite.

 

Yet still, with no gate sharing, which helped level competition as the Football League grew into a storyboard of great clubs, or of other revenues, Ayre says Liverpool want more. The Premier League was born from an impulse of individual greed against the collective – unlike US sports – and that appetite has only grown, not lessened, in the 20th year of the English game's new era, with the last vestiges of sharing under renewed attack".

 

 

Pure fucking greed, then again we were instrumental with Noel White and David Dein in creating the premier league. That has worked out well hasnt it, the major winners being the likes of Moores, Edwards and Dein and the rest who took money out of the game.

 

Back then they at least put on a pretense it was the best thing for English football, now there is not even a need. Such that society has changed me me me. Personally I would have loved our owners and a few others to lobby Uefa for increased revenue sharing including gate revenue. Then again I am a quixotic fucker and they didn't buy us to help police Uefa. You get into a bed with a consortium headed by a hedgefund man, then this is the ultimate outcome sadly.

 

If I was the likes of Bolton and Everton, Villa etc, I would say fuck off to the likes of Liverpool, United and City and Arsenal and we will play our own league under proper revenue sharing.

[TheHitman]

Well said Faustus.

[Tyler Durden]

Although I can see where they ate coming from with regards to us being a major draw compared to others. This is probably more being driven by all this City bollocks, by the time anything like tgi would be implemented City will be at a level where Chelsea are.

 

This would bankrupt most teams in the league though because most are paying wages in-line with the TV deals, if it were to drastically drop they'd be fucked.

[The Acolyte]

People seem to be missing the point.

He said "maybe", NOT "we want this, we want that".

He was simply testing the water.

Also could this be just sabre rattling by LFC for the next tv deal?

Remember we have slipped out of the top 4 and have not won a trophy for a number of years. This could be an attempt by the club that we are not omitted from the "top table" come the negotiations with sky.

Also, how much does sky make in overseas contracts and how much of that is passed to the clubs? Is it included in the current deal and how much of the deal does it make up.

[Section_31]

People seem to be missing the point.

He said "maybe", NOT "we want this, we want that".

He was simply testing the water.

Also could this be just sabre rattling by LFC for the next tv deal?

Remember we have slipped out of the top 4 and have not won a trophy for a number of years. This could be an attempt by the club that we are not omitted from the "top table" come the negotiations with sky.

Also, how much does sky make in overseas contracts and how much of that is passed to the clubs? Is it included in the current deal and how much of the deal does it make up.

 

I think it's been in the pipeline since the day we were bought. The main reason so many Americans turned to football was because it's difficult to make huge amounts of money over there due to all the rules, some of which are listed above in this thread, amazing really to think their sports are fairer than ours when the rest of their society is all money, money money. Maybe they're taking the long view that a fairer game is a stable game that will last longer, whereas I think many of the people connected to football - from FIFA on down - are just trying to juice it as quickly and as massively as they can until there's nothing left and it dies on the vine.

[xerxes]

If I was the likes of Bolton and Everton, Villa etc, I would say fuck off to the likes of Liverpool, United and City and Arsenal and we will play our own league under proper revenue sharing

 

A very shrewd point which underscores our vulnerability.

 

The rest of the league, if they said "play ball, or leave" ,could leave the top four/five with no-one to play domestically.

 

Man U/ Chelsea/Arsenal (maybe man city) have nothing to gain by helping us into a Euro league.

 

We are playing with a considerably weaker hand than some believe.

[Haan'sThunderbolt]

Yeah, fuck the small clubs.

 

Fuck the likes of Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town, Derby County and Wimbledon- small clubs who achieved varying levels of success in the days when the gate receipts were shared and it was possible to compete in the upper echeleons through shrewd management; the nack of being able to spot a gem of a player and having that ability to exact every last little drop of ability from the players you had in front of you.

 

The incredibly sad thing now is that clubs of that ilk will never, ever be able to achieve what they had in the past through the same means. The formation of the Premier League put the knife to the throat of this very notion and individual TV rights would drain the blood.

 

Everton, the Mancs, Spurs, Arsenal and ourselves had the temerity in the late 80s to ask "why should we share a piece of the pie with some bumnuts from the fourth tier?" I'll fucking tell you why- because it's a sport. It's not a fucking business. It's a form of escapism; a relief from that shit job you despise or that nagging wife you've shacked up with. It's peoples' emotions you're toying with. Cut through the tribal bullshit and posturing and you'll find that we're not so different as football fans. We all want the same things. We all want a stable, well run club, we all want success and, most of all, we all want to take pride in our team. Unfortunately, the goalposts were not just moved when the Premier League came into being, they were fucking swindled and moved onto another playing field. It closed the door on the dreams of fans who clung to that hope of emulating the achievement of smaller clubs not too disimilar from themselves.

 

It's rampant capitalism in it's most vulgar form. The rich get richer, the poor stay fucked. You can dream on if you think it's going to change.

 

Football changed for the worse in this country when the Premier League came into being and individual TV rights would just mean that it gets a whole lot uglier.

 

Absolutely!!

And Sky and all the idiots in the media tell us the game has never been better.....

 

Can a Provincial club ever win the PL/ CL ever again??? No.....

 

When will fans wake up?? Same clubs year in, year out - how is that interesting or exciting??

[Juniper]

Faustus spot on, completely.

 

If we even attempt this I'll seriously think about fucking football off, watching from afar.

 

Let's get back to the top in a fair and deserving way, not by sucking the blood dry of the lower clubs. Not into that one bit.

 

Already out of touch with the game, this will be the tipping point I think.

 

I was already a bit wary of this type of thing when the owners stated they thought the awful 39th Premier League game abroad idea wasn't such a bad one.

 

Lets see what happens though, not overreacting as nothing may come of it.

Edited October 12, 2011 by Juniper