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- BBC secured UK£9m joint deal with ITV for 2023 tournament
- Fifa had wanted more money from big European nations
- Broadcaster wants to build audiences for non-British teams
The BBC was “genuinely nervous” about getting a UK broadcast rights deal for the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup over the line but remained confident that its initial offer for the tournament was competitive.
The public service broadcaster (PSB) secured a last-minute UK£9 million (US$10.9 million) joint deal with ITV to broadcast the soccer showpiece after the UK, along with France, Germany, Italy and Spain, was excluded from a wider European Broadcasting Union (EBU) deal.
Fifa, which was selling the rights to the tournament individually in many markets for the first time, argued that broadcasters were undervaluing the rights, noting that bids were a fraction of the value of contracts for the men’s World Cup.
However, the BBC’s director of sport Barbara Slater said it believed its bid was competitive and that the platform offered by the corporation would help grow both the commercial appeal of the tournament and women’s soccer – allowing Fifa to realise its ambition of greater commercial revenue in the future.
“I think we can say we’re not just recent supporters of women’s football,” Slater told the Leaders Week sports business conference in London. “I mean, we’ve been doing it for decades and we’ve seen an extraordinary transformation. You can’t criticise the ambition of a governing body to generate the best commercial return it can.
“We just got caught in a difference of opinion but we also got caught up in a situation in Europe where there was a collective feeling [from Fifa] that broadcasters needed to step up. I know there were some enormous differentials in terms of what some European broadcasters were putting on the table and we felt we’d put a very fair bid on the table. That bid was carefully calculated.”
Despite the BBC’s nerves, both it and production partner IMG worked on the assumption that a deal would be secured, with an initial plan to broadcast the early stages of the tournament from the BBC’s studios in Salford and then fly out a team to cover the semi-finals and final in Australia.
“I think at one point we were thinking we could do it with 24 hours’ notice,” said Slater. “It might not have been the most lavish production, but we could do it so long as we had people on standby.”
One of the reasons offered for the lower bids was the time zone difference between Western Europe and the host nation, which would mean unfavourable broadcast slots. The other is that broadcasters were having difficulty valuing the rights because they had previously been bunded with those for the men’s tournament.
While the BBC benefited from huge audiences for England’s games, Slater said some matches were “slot negative”, which essentially means that the BBC could have broadcast other programming and attracting higher ratings.
Slater added that the BBC’s multi-channel coverage across television, radio and digital, coupled with the lack of commercial pressure that meant it could schedule matches on its main channel, would deliver more long-term value for Fifa.
“One of the privileges of being the BBC is that we can take that risk without those commercial [considerations],” said Slater. “What we want to do is genuinely support a tournament.
“We knew the time zone would have an impact [on audience] but we felt it was important to have an on-site presence regardless of whether England made it [to the latter stages of the competition] or not.
“We want a women’s tournament to be treated more like a tournament. For the men’s European Championships, England matches accounted for half of viewing hour figures, whereas for the women’s it was 60 per cent. The next big shift is that these major tournaments are watched [by the public] and there is no need for a domestic interest to drive the audience.”
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