The England and USA Games Will Not Be Televised

Are you and England or USA fan? Planning to watch this weekend’s World Cup qualifiers on television? You better start making new plans then.

Team USA is playing away to Honduras, and needs to keep picking up points in order to book a spot in South Africa. But unfortunately the game rights were sold in the USA on a closed circuit television deal, which means bars had to pay big money (I think in the thousands) to screen the game, and so will likely be charging an entry fee for people to come in and watch. According to USSoccer.com’s list of places to see the game, not many bars were keen on that deal.

As most of our English readers will be aware by now, Saturday’s Ukraine vs England World Cup qualifier will not be broadcast on television in the UK. At all. Instead it’s being shown as an internet broadcast only.

Those keen to see the England game can sign up to watch Ukraine vs England here (provided you’re not in a restricted territory) with prices beginning at £4.99 and rising to £11.99 as the game gets closer.

The big questions are: Why and How? Why are two international football matches unavailable to watch on regular television? How did this happen?

The common misconception is that the American and English soccer authorities are to blame. But that’s not really the case. In international games it’s the home team that gets to sell the TV rights. So the Honduran FA sold it to the highest bidder, which happened to be the closed circuit television people.

With the England game, it’s basically Setanta’s fault. The Ukrainian FA had sold the UK rights to Setanta, which then famously folded, and so the game was open for bidding again. But… England had already qualified, making the game much less attractive to bidders. And so online broadcaster Perform stepped in.

101GreatGoals sound semi-optimistic that the England game could represent the start of an online football viewing revolution. I’m not so sure. Public reaction to the way this game is broadcast has not been smiley faces. And the internet broadcast deal is basically the deal of last resort.

(Note: If you’re in North America, the England game is on Setanta USA and Setanta Canada, neither of which folded when Setanta UK did.)

So what can be done? How could the rules be changed to ensure future international games are available on regular television? I’d quite like to see a situation where home teams don’t get to sell the TV rights in the away team’s nation. The Honduran and Ukrainian FAs have no interest in whether US or English fans can see the game easily, they just sell to the highest bidder. So maybe a simple new FIFA rule could mandate that the away team is allowed to sell it’s own TV rights in its own country. Downside is that the smaller home teams would miss out on a payday when they host a team with a lucrative media market.

Tom Dunmore at Pitch Invasion has a similar, but maybe better idea:

A solution could be for confederations to manage rights sales as a bloc and ensure they are sold (or resold) to mainstream broadcasters. This may have a benefit for smaller nations packaged with larger nations, just as collective Premier League rights sales benefit the likes of Bolton and just as UEFA have started centrally selling the Europa League rights, but this would also mean a smaller share for England in UEFA or the U.S. in Concacaf (as well as the frightening thought of Jack Warner handling more money). It would also mean trouble for increasingly lucrative and powerful sports marketing agencies like Kentaro, Soccer United Marketing and Traffic, who typically resell rights to the highest bidder.

If that was put forward, I’d vote for it. Not that we get to vote on such things. We’re just the paying public.

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