Yesterday the FA announced they have agreed a deal to allow UEFA to sell the TV rights for England games as part of a group deal involving all 53 UEFA members. 

The deal, which is believed to be worth £100m over four years for the English FA, means that the TV rights for England games for Euro 2016 and the World Cup 2018 will be sold collectively with the rest of the UEFA members. 

FA general secretary, Alex Horne, claims it is a creative solution and the deal is worth more than their current valuation and UEFA President Michel Platini said the collective bargaining is essential and will help develop national team football with all 53 UEFA members being guaranteed a fixed revenue.

There is very little information on exactly how this deal would work but it is something that is not uncommon in this country. The Premier League use this model of collective bargaining with the TV rights for live Premier League games being sold as package, ensuring a more even distribution of money throughout the league. Whereas in Italy and Spain teams sell their rights individually which often leads to the bigger and more popular clubs earning significantly more in TV revenue, distorting competition in the leagues.  

How this transcends into International football or what the benefits are I’m not too sure, maybe the likes of Luxemburg and San Marino will now have the funds to develop their infrastructure, whether this will happen in practice I’m not convinced. 

The biggest question for England fans (if we qualify for the Euro 2016 and World Cup 2018) will be who will UEFA sell the rights too and will this mean the end of the games being protected by the Queen as part of the sporting crown jewels that should be available on free to air channels?

Sky TV have already questioned the validity of this recently and were told that World Cup and European Championship games can and will remain as part of the protected Crown jewels, however with UEFA now selling the rights collectively it is highly likely that Sky or another pay TV channel from abroad will buy the rights and then sell them on domestically. 

I feel this is the end of England games in major tournaments being show on free to air TV, but who knows 2016 is a long way away and maybe, just maybe they will still be protected and maybe we will all be travelling to work on jetpacks!!

Source http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9432491.stm

It is quarter final time this weekend and we are down to the last eight teams and the excitement and buzz around the FA cup should be in full effect. However there is the lingering view that the FA Cup has lost its magic and with the FA currently exploring options to revamp the competition and Premier League teams more focused on either the title or staying in the division does the FA Cup still have the appeal to both clubs and fans?

In the wake of falling attendances and weakened teams there has been talk of seeding teams and abolishing replays as some ideas of how to revamp the cup and make it more appealing to a younger generation of fans who don’t quite understand the romance of the cup and have been raised on a diet of slick marketing from Sky and the Premier League. 

The other challenge the FA face is engaging the clubs again, as the FA cup has lost its importance to the majority of Premier League teams, who see survival or Premier League points as more important than a good cup run. It is clear the financial rewards for clubs staying in the Premier League far outweighs the rewards for a good cup run however for lower league clubs a good cup run and a draw against one of the bigger clubs is a financial windfall that can keep a club running for a whole season. The trick for the FA is to keep the magic of the cup and the appeal to the lower league clubs while engaging the Premier League clubs to view it as a serious competition.

The Man United v Arsenal is the pick of the quarter final ties but both fans and managers would take defeat if they knew they would win the Premier League and at the other end of the scale Stoke v West Ham, both fans and managers would happily lose the game if they could guarantee Premier League survival. Now I realise these are two rather extreme examples but looking back at earlier rounds Premier League teams across the board have one eye on their next league fixture rather than the cup game. 

Will seedlings help this? No, the beauty of the FA cup is the random draw, there would be no 3^rd round ties like Liverpool v Man United this season and it would also mean the dream of Championship or Football League teams progressing past the 4^th round would fade fast.  Seedings would actually devalue the cup even further and would spell the end of the FA Cup. 

Would abolishing replays help? Again, no! Lower league teams who get a home draw against a top club thrive of the chance of a replay and this move would crush this chance.

I think re-structuring the cup with regards when the games are played could have a rejuvenating effect, especially the 3^rd round which currently comes after a busy and expensive Christmas period  for fans and clubs. Also maybe playing the games mid-week would help to rejuvenate the cup rather than taking up Saturday afternoons for cup games. However both these suggestions would not increase the importance to Premier League clubs and the only way to do that would be to add more value to winning the famous trophy. 

Currently clubs get a place in the Europa League but if they were rewarded with a Champions League place then clubs would take the competition a lot more seriously, and they would at least be champions instead of the 4^th best team in England.  This radical suggestion will no doubt get vetoed by the greedy Premier League and how the clubs would view this, I’m not sure but I for one would welcome the added intensity and diversity this would bring to not only the FA cup but the whole of English football and the magic of the cup would certainly return.

The FA Cup games are live on ESPN and ITV this weekend, check out our site or download our funky Iphone app here to make sure you know what teams on what channel and at what time.

For a free £25 bet on the FA Cup with Stan James click here

The FIFA executive committee are due to announce the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on Thursday against the back drop of fresh allegations of corruption and dodgy dealings, made by BBC’s Panorma program. 

It comes as no surprise that FIFA executive committee members have been engaged in backhanders and bribes, especially recently with the huge sums of money being spent on the actual bids themselves and the estimated £3 billion in revenue brought into the country.

FIFA has always been more of a clandestine intuition similar to The Masons, where nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors and there is no transparency over voting. FIFA is beast that has never been responsive to change and this is highlighted in their secret voting system. Rooting out bribery and backhanders should be quite an easy process for FIFA with heir being only 23 voters on the committee but the problem comes from the willingness and almost blasé attitude of both the competing host nations in offering bribes and the committee members willingly accepting them.

The voting is highly political within FIFA and all committee members are first and foremost looking to get the best deal for their region in exchange for their votes. It is basically a d*ck swinging contest with the competing nations pandering to the committee members who use this to show how big their d*cks are and how influential within FIFA they are. 

Jack Warner is a prime example of someone who has abused his power as recently as 2010 in buying up tickets to sell on the black market for South Africa 2010 but remains a key influential figure in the voting for 2018 and 2022. 

Hopefully this furore has given FIFA a wakeup call and they will review the whole bidding and voting process for future tournaments and they will at least understand that with so much money invested in the bid and the financial and prestigious rewards for the winning country are so large that a little transparency will go a long way to giving much more credibility to the FIFA executive committee.

I hope the FIFA committee don’t read this post, (I know Sepp is a huge fan of the site) and decide they are not going to vote for England’s bid and hopefully the Panorama program hasn’t damaged the bid too much. Politicians and the England 2018 bid party have all criticised the timing of the Panorama program, calling it unpatriotic. I tend to agree the timing is poor, especially as they were not fresh allegations. Having said that, if as a country, we are willing to spend millions of pounds on a bid we have the right to know that the voting process is fair and true. Also we have a free press in this country, something we should be proud of and not something we should be trying to curb, unpatriotic or not!

Personally I would love to see the World Cup in England and here’s hoping that Big Willys (sorry) Royal seal of approval helps seal the deal!

http://www.england2018bid.com/