Fresh from their triumphs in Korea and Japan where the World Cup organisers, FIFA, pronounced them to be the best football supporters at the tournament, Irish soccer fans were yesterday delivered a slap in the face.
Fresh from their triumphs in Korea and Japan where the World Cup organisers, FIFA, pronounced them to be the best football supporters at the tournament, Irish soccer fans were yesterday delivered a slap in the face.
Under a four year exclusive deal agreed between the Football Association of Ireland and Sky Television, Republic of Ireland home internationals - including all friendly matches - will in future be available live only on the satellite station. They will be re-broadcast by TV3, an hour after full-time. What the deal means in practice is that the only people who will be able to watch Ireland's home games are the 200,000 or thereabouts existing subscribers to Sky, which is 40 per cent owned by Mr Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. During the recent World Cup, which admittedly attracted a great many more viewers than a normal home international, just under one million people tuned into RTE for the Ireland versus Spain match. What Mr Murdoch hopes is that the difference between these two figures will be closed rapidly as people realise the only way to watch their national team at home is by signing up to Sky.
In commercial terms, this is as near as it gets to legalised blackmail. Mr Murdoch is a monopolist in sheep's clothing. His attitude towards public service broadcasting is well understood in Britain where he and the newspapers he controls rarely lose an opportunity to undermine the BBC. However, one can hardly blame Mr Murdoch and Sky for the raw-knuckled pursuit of their commercial interests. The real villains of this piece lie closer to home. The FAI has described the deal, worth €7.5 million over the four years, as "too good to turn down". Too good for whom? Selling one of the crown jewels of Irish sport to a minority foreign broadcaster is hardly the best way of proselytizing interest in the game. The FAI should not have acted as thought it were a wholly free agent, free to maximise its earning potential, come what may. The Association, after all, is in receipt of taxpayers' money to the tune of the £62 million deal with the Government to abandon its Eircom Park stadium in favour of participation in the Abbotstown project. It beggars belief that the Association could have positioned itself to be the target of public opprobrium so soon after the Saipan debacle.
Mr O'Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, last night expressed his "disappointment" at the deal. More disappointing is the failure of the Government to use legislation, passed by the Dail in 1999, to ring fence major sporting events from this sort of predatory monopolisation by a satellite broadcaster. The Government need look no further than across the Irish Sea to observe the effect of Mr Murdoch's purchasing power on terrestrial television.