ERC blindsided by new TV deal

RUGBY:FAR FROM adopting a more conciliatory stance after lobbing a grenade into ERC and European rugby the day before, yesterday representatives of both the renegade English clubs and their new television partners, BT Vision, upped the ante further by either demanding more from a revised Heineken Cup accord or forecasting the demise of the competition.

The tournament’s future is facing arguably its greatest threat to date on the eve of what was always likely to be an arduous process for renegotiating a new accord, which expires at the end of the 2013-14 season.

On foot of the English and French clubs serving notice of their intention to withdraw from the tournament without agreement of a new accord, the first full meeting of the ERC stakeholders since then takes place in Dublin next Tuesday to the backdrop of Premiership Rugby announcing a new deal worth over £180 million (€224 million) with BT Vision which also includes English clubs’ home European games from 2014-15 onwards.

This was in direct conflict with a new deal which the ERC board – including Premiership representative Peter Wheeler – approved with Sky, but undeterred, the chief executive of the latter’s rival, BT Vision’s Marc Watson, provocatively vowed they will be part of a new competition to replace the Heineken Cup.

"We are looking to set up, or at least help set up, a dazzling new European tournament with a fantastic new format, with, we hope, all the best clubs," he told sportspromedia.com. "And we've secured, from the English Premiership, the rights to that for the UK. That tournament will be the successor to the Heineken Cup, which is a very successful tournament.

“The Heineken Cup, under its current contract, has another season to run, and that will be the end of it, and we are looking to set up a brand new tournament from then. We saw in rugby an opportunity to own a sport exclusively, certainly at club level, and the rights that we’ve bought give us an opportunity to do that.”

The jewel of European Rugby is the second major battleground in a television war between Sky and BT (British Telecom), which has yet to come up with its own provider or dedicated sports channel, but is clearly intent on doing so. To that end, last June, it acquired the live rights to 38 Premier League games in the 2013-14 to 2015-16 seasons, including 18 of the 38 “first pick” games, for a total of £738 million (€911 million).

In addition to bringing forward the announcement of its own deal with Sky on Wednesday, ERC also reacted to Premiership Rugby’s statement surrounding future live European coverage by claiming their deal with BT Vision was in breach both of IRB regulations and of a mandate from the ERC board itself.

However, Mark McCafferty, chief executive of Premiership Rugby, along with one of his employers, Saracens owner Nigel Wray, disputed both of these assertions.

IRB regulation 13.2 does indeed specify that no club, or clubs, can sell broadcasting rights without “the express written consent of the Union within whose territorial jurisdiction such match is, or matches are, to be played, such consent to be in the absolute discretion of the Union.”

Premiership Rugby maintains that following an “agreement with the RFU, dated October 16th, 2007, Premiership Rugby has specific consent to control the broadcast rights of its clubs.”

The English clubs also counter claimed that ERC had no right to sell television rights beyond the expiry of the current tournament accord in 2014.

The ERC will undoubtedly maintain that even if Premiership Rugby did secure such permission, they had no right to sell Heineken Cup or cross-border matches even within their own jurisdiction. The tournament organisers will also maintain that precedents had been set in agreeing deals beyond the current and previous accords, and most of all that the ERC board did give its assent to the new Sky deal.

Meanwhile, Wray has claimed that “the English and French clubs contribute by miles the biggest part of the revenue and we don’t get our just reward”.

“The structure is clearly wrong in that we have to knock each other out to get into the tournament and all the other guys stroll in,” he told ESPN.

“And that’s not right – we have to fight to get in and we provide most of the revenue. The terms have to be changed.

“I don’t blame anybody in particular,” added Wray. “If I was Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy – which is the majority and therefore out vote England and France – then I’d want to keep the situation as it is. That’s perfectly normal. But from the point of view of England and France that doesn’t make sense.

“The answer is that the Heineken Cup is obviously a tremendous tournament but the terms need to be tweaked. And the only way that is going to change is by making a noise. If you sit there quietly then the status quo will remain and that’s not right. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t want the other four nations in – of course we do. We want a great European Cup but not on these terms.”