The SPFL have spoken to Facebook, Amazon and Apple in a bid to get the best television deal

TibbsyBear

TibbsyBear

Well-Known Member
SCOTTISH football chiefs have held face-to-face talks with some of the world's richest companies in their bid to find the best television deal.

The current contract with Sky and BT Sports runs out in 2020 and Neil Doncaster, the SPFL chief executive, is expected to announce a new TV agreement before the end of this year.

Les Gray, vice-chairman of Hamilton Academical and formerly SPFL board member, revealed that the league are a long way down the line to signing a contract which will be hugely beneficial to the Scottish game.

Gray said: "I have been at lots of meeting at Sky and BT Sports with the SPFL board and it was all positive. We will go out to tender, the new board will determined when that it, and I’m sure that will be this year.

“I can tell you that Neil has met with our TV rights specialist, a guy called Phil Lines, and in turn they have met with Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google to name a few. They have reported back to the clubs in a confidential manner.

“It is now all about whether these people are ready to come to the party when we go out to tender. They have dipped their toe in the way so we shall see what happens.

“I wouldn’t want to put a number on it but it needs to be a big number for us to excite us and drive the product forward.

“The television deal is paramount to the success of the league. It feeds certainly eight or nine of the Premiership clubs a huge amount of their revenue stream.

“In terms of percentage of Celtic and Rangers, maybe a few more, the revenue from a TV deal won’t be as significant as it is to ourselves.

“All 42 clubs rely on that revenue to thrive, in particular the full-time teams. So if we cannot get a deal which reflects the value in all of our leagues at this point, it would be very disappointing.

“Having being on the board during reconstruction of the league, part of that process was to try and distribute the funds in a fairer manner to all 42 clubs, particularly the top two leagues so clubs can stay full-time – and we’ve done that.
 
Assuming it would become a streaming service if it went to any of those 3. I think that would be terrible for Scottish football. Doesn't have close to the demand of the Premier league to do a deal like that and keep it off tv and i doubt both sides would come out of the deal thinking it was great if it went through


Also just the people that will be negotiating it don't exactly put confidence into it either
 
Barry Hearn suggested that to them 4 years ago and Regan laughed at him saying what does he know, Hearns also gave the same speech at the Football writers dinner last year and got a great ovation from the hall while Regan and Doncaster basically looked at him like he had horns, Hearns never missed the two of them throwing quotes back at them.

The dynamics of watching football has moved away from on tv and the youngsters watch it on the move on a fone or slate. At least they are now looking at the different ways to sell our game , slowly but in the right direction.
 
PortoyMortoy said:
Assuming it would become a streaming service if it went to any of those 3. I think that would be terrible for Scottish football. Doesn't have close to the demand of the Premier league to do a deal like that and keep it off tv and i doubt both sides would come out of the deal thinking it was great if it went through


Also just the people that will be negotiating it don't exactly put confidence into it either
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It’s the way forward.

If you think streaming is big now it will be tenfold in a few years. We’re approaching the stage now where in about 10 years almost everyone will be on some kind of social media platform.
 
If we don’t have a ‘streaming service’ deal at least in part then the league will end up even further behind the rest of Europe. It’s definitely the way forward.
 
Neil Doncaster’s persona just gives out the poor, downtrodden loser in life vibe. There is not a chance in hell a great deal will be struck with Amazon, Facebook, google or the like.

He will end up laying prostrate in front BT and Sky to again accept the stale, mouldy crumbs left behind from the plate the EPL feasting orgy left behind.
 
Doncaster should be no where near this deal.
Its astonishing the guy is in a job at all.
Watch this go belly up!
 
TibbsyBear said:
It’s the way forward.

If you think streaming is big now it will be tenfold in a few years. We’re approaching the stage now where in about 10 years almost everyone will be on some kind of social media platform.
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I know its the future but the problem i see is though is if it's stand alone or comes as a package with other leagues. There would be a massive decrease in viewership if you had to buy a spfl package and only got a select number of matches.

Tbh the more i think of it, it seems like an attempt to try and scare Sky/BT into paying more to keep the coverage but with Doncaster in charge we'll probably take a deal with apple for less money than the current tv deal is currently on
 
The fact that money is split between 42 teams, half of which are lucky to muster several hundred fans per home game, always strikes me as a joke. The Scottish Professional Football League should be just that, a league for professional football teams only.
 
TBH I have no idea what the contents of the negotiations are, but I have no confidence whatsoever that the guys charged with negotiating on behalf of Scottish football will get anywhere near the best deal available.
 
We get about 19m a year with the current deal which is peanuts compared to what other European countries get. This is even more baffling when you consider that deal was negotiated the same year as the premier league secured about 1.8 billion from Sky alone. They need to be aiming for at least 60m per season but the idiots always undersell themselves. There is now genuine competition out there with sky, BT, Facebook and amazon therefore there is no excuse for not getting the 60m.
 
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Talktalk said:
Barry Hearn suggested that to them 4 years ago and Regan laughed at him saying what does he know, Hearns also gave the same speech at the Football writers dinner last year and got a great ovation from the hall while Regan and Doncaster basically looked at him like he had horns, Hearns never missed the two of them throwing quotes back at them.

The dynamics of watching football has moved away from on tv and the youngsters watch it on the move on a fone or slate. At least they are now looking at the different ways to sell our game , slowly but in the right direction.
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No surprise there, we are up against it with these clowns running the game.
 
So with the current TV deals, the EPL get almost 100 times (Yes, ONE HUNDRED TIMES) what the geniuses at the SPFL managed to get for our game.
They really are fūcking useless.
 
Talktalk said:
Barry Hearn suggested that to them 4 years ago and Regan laughed at him saying what does he know, Hearns also gave the same speech at the Football writers dinner last year and got a great ovation from the hall while Regan and Doncaster basically looked at him like he had horns, Hearns never missed the two of them throwing quotes back at them.

The dynamics of watching football has moved away from on tv and the youngsters watch it on the move on a fone or slate. At least they are now looking at the different ways to sell our game , slowly but in the right direction.
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We can only dream of having someone like him at the helm of Scottish football
 
If its currently 19 million a year, in order for any progress to be made realistically the next annual number has to begin with 5, not 1.

Realistically though, would you be paying that for this, biased, inept, dinosaur of a league?
 
Amazon realistically would see the spfl as much a tester than anything

They could easily pick up the rights tho spfl an see what happens with subscription rates etc in the UK and see if its worth in turn going for epl at next bidding

To the muppets in spfl board only look to see what they can get not what we are really worth.

The more they can invite to the bidding the better tbh
 
I know it's probably in the SPFL rules, but our club shouldn't allow some clueless, incompetent muppets to negotiate our TV and online viewing contracts for us. We should have our own experts negotiating these deals.
 
Godrup99 said:
If its currently 19 million a year, in order for any progress to be made realistically the next annual number has to begin with 5, not 1.

Realistically though, would you be paying that for this, biased, inept, dinosaur of a league?
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While we aren't a patch on the big leagues of Europe this is the best quality the SPL has been in for years, we are finally sorting ourselves out, so are Hearts and Hibs, Aberdeen are what they have been for years and the filth are doing what they have done under Rogers, we have other teams like Killie with a manager who has done ok in the EPL previously. There's a lot to be positive about, certainly compared with when the last TV deal was negotiated, even our incompetent rulers cannot fail to get a significant increase in revenue through this.
 
Dungcaster would find it hard to negotiate his way out of a phone box

No one will take him seriously with that stupid haircut. He is a complete whanker and out of his depth.

Look at the money both Sky and BT have given to the EPL and EFL in comparison

Scotland gets a paltry amount due to a legacy of allowing the SFA & SPFL incompetents to negotiate TV deals.

Now we have Stevie G and TTS (at the moment) going up against each other and a potential league that’s not a foregone conclusion with decent competition surely Scotland can negotiate much better terms for all 42 clubs and not just the top ones.
 
“The SFA are delighted to announce a new broadcasting deal with Apple worth in excess of £500,000k over 10 years AND we all get free iPads!”
 
I am actually in favor of online streaming, ideally the games on Sky stay on Sky with improved terms and we ditch BT and give Amazon their games.
 
Who outside of Scotland would want to watch the football up here though. It’s utter shite
Outside of our games and them the audience/‘demand’ will be virtually zero
 
EndOfDays said:
I am actually in favor of online streaming, ideally the games on Sky stay on Sky with improved terms and we ditch BT and give Amazon their games.
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BT over Sky any day. Sky's coverage of Scottish football is completely rotten.
 
EndOfDays said:
I am actually in favor of online streaming, ideally the games on Sky stay on Sky with improved terms and we ditch BT and give Amazon their games.
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I'd much rather we ditched Sky and stuck with BT.

For all their faults of allowing Sutton on the TV for every game, they at least give off the impression of caring about our game with the build up/analysis and other programmes they put out (along with the pre-season promos).

Sky do f*ck all, and don't give a flying.
 
EndOfDays said:
I am actually in favor of online streaming, ideally the games on Sky stay on Sky with improved terms and we ditch BT and give Amazon their games.
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I’d rather stick with BT and ditch Sky if I’m honest. Sky have no interest in Scottish football outwith the old firm games. BT seem to promote Scottish football a lot better and they seem to put a lot more effort into the games (build up, analysis etc).
 
SuperGers07 said:
streaming is the way TV will be in the near future

Get used to it.
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I still don’t know exactly what people mean when they say that.

If it’s in an Amazon Prime/Netflix sense, perhaps....because you can watch them through your telly, and crucially, it’s simple to do so.

The eleven sports model will fail as it stands because people don’t want to watch the big match on a phone or iPad. And it isn’t straightforward to broadcast those images onto your tv at any rate.
 
If they go down the route of streaming regardless of which partner they choose, we all know it opens up the opportunity of free football for the technically aware. Dungcaster and chums aren't very bright.
 
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