Football Association faces £100m shortfall as Uefa moves to reform England TV rights

The Football Association is battling to prevent a multi-million pound shortfall in television revenue resulting from radical plans by Uefa to change the way the rights to England matches are sold

The FA is in increasingly tense negotiations with the European governing body, which wants to centralise the sale of all television rights to European Championship qualifying matches, mirroring the arrangements that have proved successful in the Champions League and Europa League. Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, wants all 53 member federations to sign over their broadcast rights in time for the annual congress in Paris next month, at which he will be re-elected unopposed.

The measures have proved popular with small and medium-sized federations that will receive guaranteed income levels, and Uefa insists the move will increase revenues and that guaranteed income streams will benefit all federations. Uefa is also understood to want to market European World Cup qualifying matches collectively.

In indicative numbers circulated to national federations, Uefa has suggested that centralised selling would attract €500 million for the 2016 qualifying programme, up from an estimated €270 million generated by federations individually.

There is a potentially significant downside for the FA however, with worst-case scenario predictions in Wembley circles of a shortfall of up to £100 million over a four-year cycle. The FA will demand compensation for any such loss in revenue as a condition of any deal with Uefa.

The potential shortfall arises because the FA would have to unbundle its rights for FA Cup matches from the more valuable England games, exposing the true value of the under-fire knockout competition in an already difficult market.

The FA’s last four-year deal for FA Cup and England games, struck with ITV and Setanta in 2007 at the top of a booming market, was worth £425 million domestically, and a further £150 million in overseas deals.

The two properties complement each other, with the FA Cup offering volume and the England team unparalleled national interest. If the rights to England qualifiers were passed to Uefa, however, the FA would have only a handful of friendly internationals to make the FA Cup deal more attractive.

The FA’s chance of matching its current deal has already been reduced by declining interest in the Cup, the fallout from the collapse of Setanta and the challenge of the wider economy.

It is already discussing ways to energise the competition, with ideas such as regionalisation and seeding proving unpopular with supporters and commentators.

The FA’s position is also weakened by its current contracts. After the collapse of Setanta, the FA did a four-year deal with ESPN for pay-TV rights, leaving it out of step with ITV’s terrestrial deal, which expires at the end of next season.

The FA now has to decide whether to go to the market with just a two-year offering to terrestrial broadcasters, which analysts predict would reduce its value, or offer four years and face a similar dilemma when the ESPN deal expires in 2013-14. The rights to England women’s and age-group internationals would also be affected.

The complexities of the Uefa issue poses a major financial and political challenge to new chairman David Bernstein in his first month in the job. Potentially the issue puts the FA’s financial priorities in direct conflict with Bernstein’s desire to build bridges with Uefa and Fifa following the failed World Cup bid. (www.telegraph.uk)