Email From Niall Cogley Head of RT€ngland Sport
To Peter Ryan
Éanna Buckley
Terry Kelly
Chris Rock
Bryan Hammond
Dear Viewer,
Thank you for your correspondence regarding RTE's lack of recent coverage
of domestic football and apologies for taking so long to respond.
RTE's annual investment into football in Ireland had grown to almost
€1,750,000 (including non-exclusive International rights) when, to our
surprise, the FAI decided to change their broadcast arrangements without
reference to RTE. The FAI reported that they had secured €1,850,000 per
year from Sky (including exclusive international rights) and that they
would now have a broadcast partner who "showed a real appetite" for the
domestic game. RTE took this to mean that, between Sky and TV3, the
domestic game would be covered at least as well as had been the case
under the RTE/FAI agreement.
When further information regarding the new agreement was made public RTE
challenged the FAI's assertion that the domestic game would be
unaffected.
We reminded them of the scale of our investment and of the way we had
been working with them to develop the marketing of the domestic game. In
particular we pointed out the 25 outside broadcasts per year that we had
been deploying and the dedicated Sunday Sports programme and Soccer Show
programmes that we had been investing in over the course of the contract.
In a formal response on August 19th, the General Secretary wrote that
"...RTÉ were so far behind the other broadcasters.....for both domestic
and international football". He added "We have achieved a substantial
increase in rights fees without any diminution in coverage".
Although domestic football was struggling to justify prime-time broadcast
(with an average live match share of just 11% on Friday evenings) RTE had
planned to continue our investment in domestic football until a) All Home
International matches were assigned exclusively to BskyB and b) RTE was
formally told that the domestic coverage was going to be better without
RTE.
Of course we were disappointed to lose the FAI contract and, yes, we were
sad at the manner in which our long relationship had come to an end.
However we had to accept that we had been out manoevred by Sky, if not
significantly out-bid, and that the FAI had secured a better overall
deal for themselves. Or so we thought. We still had much work to do on
other major contracts such as Six Nations Rugby, Champions League, Away
Euro 2004 Soccer Internationals and many others so we turned our
attention to these and other matters.
We were genuinely astonished to discover that, contrary to their earlier
repeated assertions, the FAI had no agreement in respect of the FAI Cup
and, further, that they were claiming that they had scheduled matches "to
suit RTE" when we had not been party to any such discussion.
Our agreement with the SPL had been intended to compliment coverage of
the domestic game on the other channels rather than to compete with it.
Long before our SPL deal had been concluded, BBC Network had announced
that they would be broadcasting Celtic v Rangers live. I took a telephone
call from one disgruntled fan asking why RTE had asked for the FAI Cup
semi-final to start at the same time as the BBC's live coverage of the
Old Firm. He wanted to watch both.
RTE had reassigned its budgetary and resource provisions when the FAI
assured us that they were so well covered. We considered that the
domestic game had been reasonably well represented in our schedules and
that, if another broadcaster(s) would increase that level of coverage,
then the domestic game would do okay.
You might disagree with this but, in percentage terms, our spend went way
beyond our return by in relation to any other comparable property.
We covered the FAI Cup Final (the second FAI Cup final this year) at an
unpredicted cost of over €25,000 to RTE and we are in discussions with
the FAI regarding what level of coverage we can offer into the future.
RTE has informed the FAI that we wish to broadcast the Cup going forward
and we would hope to reach some agreement with them over the coming
months. We understand that the FAI has more pressing matters to attend to
in the shorter term.
I am sorry that you feel aggrieved that RTE let you down or that we were
deliberately "snubbing" the FAI or any section of our audience. That is
certainly not our intention and would run counter to our stated policy of
serving our viewers.
However there are many soccer fans in Ireland who are not interested in
the domestic game and we make no apology for securing other relevant live
football rights, although I must accept that British football is not
necessarily the best football in the world (Bryan)! The absence of Irish
football was not of our making and is a matter of genuine regret.
I hope I have addressed the various points raised in your respective
correspondence and that you will be able to enjoy the very many soccer
and other sports properties that we do have in our schedules over the
coming years.
Yours sincerely,
Niall Cogley
Head of TV Sport
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taken from jw's messagebaord from Chris Rock
