RTÉ must share the blame for losing rights

AN emotional finger of guilt has been pointed at the FAI for its role in selling broadcast rights for home games to Sky.

While the FAI has acted in a deplorably selfish manner, RTÉ must also share some of the blame for taking the FAI for granted, and poorly managing its own resources.

There is another important feature to RTÉ's involvement in this affair which has not received much attention in the national press.

RTÉ, by its own admission, spends a sum of e1.3 million each year to broadcast highlights of games from the English Premiership, a very high price to pay indeed for a league that is not even ranked the best of Europe's elite leagues. This cost excludes the additional expense of sending RTÉ commentators to England to report on games broadcast.

It also excludes the money RTÉ pays its correspondents in England, who file reports from all premiership games on RTÉ's weekend radio coverage of the Premiership.

I am no economist, but I doubt that the cost to RTÉ of its wall-to-wall coverage of English football would leave much change from e2 million. And all of this spent on a single European league.

This amount of money could be justified if RTÉ's coverage included Spain's La Liga, the Bundesliga and Serie-A. But RTÉ's football coverage all but ignores these top tier European leagues.

Perhaps RTÉ would have been in a much better position to present a more robust bid for the Republic's home games if it didn't waste so much of its cash resources on the over-hyped Premiership.

Raymond Doyle,

Ardri,

Sixmilebridge,

Co Clare