EBU In Fight To Keep World Cup Rights Free To All

The European Broadcasting Union is fighting to ensure that the coverage of the next two football World Cups in 2002 and 2006 are shown on free to air television. The EBU are usually sold the television rights to World Cups by FIFA, the international governing body for football, but this year the rights were sold to a private company who could sell the rights to the highest bidders

The EBU is urging the various different terrestrial broadcasters from around the continent to lobby their respective governments to protect the rights to the finals in a similar fashion to protected events in the United Kingdom. The Kirch organisation, the company who have won the rights to the finals, are believed to want to start selling them immediately in a bid to claw back some of the money that was spent on acquiring the rights.

Companies like the BBC, who are members of the EBU, could find themselves frozen out of coverage of the event by commercial stations like ITV and possibly BSkyB. Despite gaining screening rights to British athletics a couple of weeks ago (see Newsline), the BBC suffered some blows in the last month in respect to broadcast rights. Channel 4 snatched away its broadcasting rights to English Test Cricket (see Newsline), and BSkyB won the broadcasting rights to the Oscars, out-bidding the BBC with a multi-million pound three year deal (see Newsline).

Jean-Benard Munch, the EBU Secretary General says: “The World Cup is unique, the perfect example of an event for the man in the street, and should be available as a whole: all matches should be accessible on free-to-air channels.”

EBU: 00-22-717 2053