Barbara Slater has justified the BBC’s paltry investment in Scottish football by quoting ‘market dynamics’.
The BBC’s Sports Director was speaking at the Telegraph’s Business of Sport conference justifying the £204m three year price paid for English Premier League highlights.
On top of the money paid to the richest league in the world Gary Lineker is believed to be on a salary of around £2m/year from the state broadcaster which pays Scottish football £3m a year for television AND radio coverage as well as substantial on-line content.
While the English Premier League is without doubt a high demand product the BBC ‘s first duty is public service with the English game receiving over 20 times the amount of money paid to Scotland which has one tenth of the population of England.
The BBC has lost many live sporting events to commercial stations in recent years with England’s football internationals and test match cricket long gone and the Open golf next to disappear from the BBC screens.
“The sports rights market is intensely competitive and there are all sorts of dynamics that are taken into consideration when you put together what you would bid for rights,” Slater explained said.
“And it is quite correct that, the licence fee, we are trying to get as much as we can in terms of sports rights with the investment. So we are, to a degree, going to be dictated by the market rate.
“And the fact is – and I know the comparison you’re going to draw between highlights of football in Scotland and highlights that we would pay for the Premier League.
“The truth is, the Premier League is a global brand. It is loved by audiences and we think it’s incredibly important that Match of the Day, as the highlights broadcaster of Premier League football, is an incredibly important programme for us to invest in.”
If Slater wishes to play the market rather than public service there are millions wishing to back her up by ditching the licence fee.
With their state subsidy the BBC distort the market place putting commercial and subscription stations at a disadvantage while pouring incredible sums of money into the accounts of Slater, Lineker and others detached from the realities of the market place.
The fourth rate coverage of the Scottish game provided by Sportscene is a shadow of the service provided free online through You Tube which spends more time showing real highlights rather than having bland pundits giving predictable verdicts.
If the BBC wishes to justify it’s out-dated licence fee they ought to televise Scottish football on a par with it’s beloved Match Of The Day- if it wants to work the market it should ditch the licence fee and allow it’s public to spend £12 a month elsewhere on the television that they CHOOSE.