BBC lose out in new League Cup deal

BBC Scotland have lost the rights to screen Scottish League Cup football.

A new four year contract with BT Sport will give the competition a UK wide audience and further reduce the state broadcasters links with Scottish football.

BT are believed to be paying £2m a year to sponsor the new look competition with the current BBC £1.5m/year deal for radio, television and internet coverage of the SPFL and League Cup ending in May.

The current BBC Scotland League Cup deal allows the broadcaster one live match from each round of the competition with Celtic’s semi-final and final ties last season bringing in bumper audiences. This season the BBC chose to show live coverage of the Inverness Caley Thistle v Ross County match ahead of Hearts v Celtic.

Announcing the new deal Neil Doncaster said: “We are delighted to welcome BT Sport as our exclusive League Cup TV broadcast partner and to have their support for the new format. Our agreement with BT Sport delivers a huge increase in the number of games being shown live as well as providing increased competition prize money for clubs.

“The new format has also enabled the re-introduction of a winter break for Ladbrokes Premiership clubs. We are consulting with Ladbrokes Championship, League 1 and League 2 clubs to establish whether they also favour a winter break in their respective divisions.”

Simon Green, head of BT Sport, said: “BT Sport is thrilled to deepen its connection to Scottish football through this new long-term deal. Our team looks forward to bringing fans an exciting and innovative new competition from July 2016. Today’s agreement expands our summer programming line-up while also giving Scottish football fans an exciting new summer football competition.”

The new look tournament will make little difference to Celtic who along with all teams in European competitions will go straight into the last 16 of the competition which will be played as a straight knock out.

From July next year 40 clubs, including the winners of the Highland and Lowaland Leagues, will form eight groups of five playing each other once between July 16 and 30.

The eight group winners plus four runners up will be joined by the European representatives for the knock out stage.

It’s expected that the tournament will be completed in the autumn allowing the SPFL Premiership to enjoy a two week winter break in January.