Liverpool FC wants own foreign TV rights

[Larry-G]

Liverpool’s managing director, Ian Ayre has said that the football club is interested in negotiating their own overseas television rights deal and moving away from the existing Premier League agreement.

The 20 Premier League teams currently command a deal worth £1.4 billion for their overseas broadcast rights to 2013.

Liverpool are not happy at having to share that income equally with smaller clubs when they could earn more from selling their non-UK rights individually.

The club claim they risk being left behind by the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid who already sell their own overseas rights.

Ayre commented: “…With the greatest of respect to our colleagues in the Premier League, but if you’re a Bolton fan in Bolton, then you subscribe to Sky because you want to watch Bolton. Everyone gets that. Likewise, if you’re a Liverpool fan from Liverpool, you subscribe. But if you’re in Kuala Lumpur there isn’t anyone subscribing to Astro, or ESPN to watch Bolton, or if they are it’s a very small number. Whereas the large majority are subscribing because they want to watch Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal.”

“So is it right that the international rights are shared equally between all the clubs? Some people will say: ‘Well you’ve got to all be in it to make it happen.’ But isn’t it really about where the revenue is coming from, which is the broadcaster, and isn’t it really about who people want to watch on that channel? We know it is us, and others. At some point we definitely feel there has to be some rebalance on that, because what we are actually doing is disadvantaging ourselves against other big European clubs.”

 http://www.advanced-television.com/index.php/2011/10/12/liverpool-fc-wants-own-foreign-tv-rights/

[Stanman]

Some one should tell these arse wipes with so much consolidation of power and money, no one will want to see one sided matches and there certainly is not the appetite to see 10 matches between the top team every year.