FAI poised for €40m TV rights windfall

IRISH soccer is poised for a massive €40m windfall as UEFA chiefs put the finishing touches to plans to pool match television rights among its 53 member associations.

The proposed agreement, which should be ratified at today’s UEFA annual congress in Paris, will considerably ease the FAI’s financial pressures when introduced in 2014. And it will ensure the Association is good to its pledge to meet a 2020 debt wipe-out, according to chief executive John Delaney.

Delaney has been a vocal advocate of centralised TV rights, and is part of a UEFA working group that brought the proposal to executive level.

“It is impossible to prepare annual budgets based on the vagaries of a European Championship draw,” he argued. “By centralising the rights, each member country has a guaranteed baseline to work off.”

Speaking in Cork, he wouldn’t commit to a specific value on the pooled rights proposal, but didn’t dispute the suggestion it would be worth a whopping €10m a season over a four-year cycle. Rights from glamour friendlies would provide additional revenue and if those figures are sanctioned today, it represents a significant coup for Delaney and the FAI.

To put it in perspective, the existing system has worked disastrously for the Association in the current Euro 2012 campaign, with top seeds Russia only generating a miserly €250,000 in TV rights for the game against the Republic at the Aviva Stadium last October. Had Ireland been paired in the same group as heavy hitters France, Spain, England or Germany, the TV rights would have been worth 20 times that amount. Other nations, such as Saturday’s Euro 2012 opponents, Macedonia, and Armenia, have also been very poor value in terms of television right.

Addressing the FAI’s broader economic difficulties, Mr Delaney said that if the Association can keep its housekeeping in order for the next couple of seasons, this UEFA stimulus would provide a massive boost. He also suggested it would afford the FAI wiggle room in terms of ticket prices for Vantage Club clients at the Aviva Stadium.

“I’ve been part of a working group that has presented detailed proposals to UEFA on this and the key to it is the fact that it facilitates proper financial planning from year to year. It has been enormously difficult to prepare budgets based on the variable of tv rights. If this is successful at UEFA level on Tuesday — and all the indications are that it will be — it will come into play from 2014-2018.”

That means that July’s draw for the 2014 World Cup will be the last major tournament where the existing ‘every man for himself’ system operates in terms of match television rights.

To this point, all 53 national associations under UEFA have negotiated their television rights independently. However, the working committee has informed UEFA that over €100m in each draw cycle is being lost outside of football to agents acting on behalf of national associations.

Countries with a strong selling hand like England are believed to oppose the new centralised system even though UEFA are pledging that there will be baseline guarantees for each country which match or better existing rights income.

Last night’s meeting of the UEFA executive approved the format of the European qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup, with the 53 countries split into eight groups of six teams and one group of five. The nine group winners will qualify for the World Cup and the eight best runners-up will contest home-and-away play-offs to determine which additional four teams qualify and take up the remainder of the 13 slots allocated to the European confederation.

Ironically from an Irish point of view, it was not decided whether those play-off contenders will be seeded, as was the case for the 2010 finals, when the Republic were paired with Raymond Domenech’s flawed French outfit.