A look at the SPFL’s International TV Deals

Having happened upon MP & Silva’s rights brochure while looking for something else, I found the page on which they “sell” the SPFL, which you can see for yourself at http://mpsilva.com/catalogue/.



The edition, selling the 2016/17 season, caught the eye given how spectacularly out of date it was, featuring star players Kris Commons (frozen out of the Celtic team since the end of 13/14 season), Steve Thompson (actually called Steven, in the Championship and retired at that point), Billy McKay (left the SPFL in Jan 2015 for Wigan), Chris Erskine (at that point a bit part player at Dundee United during the relegation season), Aaron Doran (Aaron Doran), Mickael Antoine Curier (Left in Feb 2015 and had a short return at the non-televised League One Dunfermline at the end of the year - by 16/17, he was in Belgium) and Jo Inge Berget (left Celtic in Jan 2015). As sales pitches go, trying to sell the league based on players who weren’t even playing and who weren’t especially marketable in the first place was a startling one and, upon taking a picture of it and shoving it on twitter, most people have seemed to agree resulting in a couple of hundred expressions of exasperation by most who have seen it.

It is hardly the only mistake in the brochure - for a start, they also claim Rangers are in the Championship in 16/17 which, even if you made the brochure in Jan 16, you would have known wasn’t going to be the case and get the amount of titles Celtic have won wrong - but in an atmosphere where MP & Silva get things right for all of the other properties they offer, it has been rightly held up as an example of the SPFL not knowing what they’re doing.

But, how do the SPFL sell rights internationally and how exactly does that look if you’re a viewer abroad?

The first element to look at is that the SPFL don’t actually sell rights internationally, MP & Silva do (hence why I was looking at them in the first place).

That’s something that most people won’t actually be aware of so it’s important to state just who MP & Silva are and what it is they actually do. MP & Silva, at it’s simplest, broker rights deals for leagues across the world. When it comes to the SPFL, it’s perhaps the simplest working relationship of all.





Way back in 2013, when the SPFL had just been formed, it needed TV deals. The deal in the UK continued but those outside of the UK had lapsed. What the SPFL needed to do was set up rights deals in many places quickly, something it did not have the expertise to do in house. As a result, they struck a deal with MP & Silva - MP & Silva got themselves the rights to sell the SPFL in every territory except the UK at a cost of £20m for the rights to do this until the end of the 2022/23 season (from 2014/15 onwards). What that means is that any broadcaster, mobile operator, streaming service or bookmaker not based in the UK that wants to show the SPFL on their service has to pay MP & Silva.

Now, it’s worth stopping here just to point out that this length of deal is very much not normal - Serie A and Bundesliga, for example, work with MP & Silva too but on four year cycles, the EPL for a three year cycle and even the Polish Leagues on a six year cycle. None of those come anywhere close to the SPFL’s length of deal and, if you want to criticise the SPFL for anything, we can criticise them for agreeing to that.

From there, we need to see how this actually works in practice. No broadcaster is going to MP & Silva and saying “Hey, I really need the SPFL”. What they are doing is saying “I really want football package A with Serie A, some Brazil national games and the other stuff.”

The SPFL is that other stuff. Take, for example, the SPFL’s previous deal in China - set up in 2015 with LeTV, it earned rave articles such as this - http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/33594354 - from the BBC’s Chris McLaughlin. But that wasn’t actually the deal. The deal was, as reported in this - http://variety.com/2015/biz/asia/chinas-letv-sports-signs-rights-pact-1201543860/ - article from Variety, far wider ranging than just the SPFL. LeTV got Serie A, the English League Cup, the FA Cup and Ligue Un amongst others. For some, this worked quite well - that the EFL Cup is now sponsored by China’s answer to Monster Energy Drink was surely helped by this. But, for the SPFL, how this actually turned out was with nothing.

No visibility, no coverage, nothing at all. Believe me, I checked. A lot. The SPFL may have had a deal, but it wasn’t being shown at all.

And that is the SPFL’s lot - by being in the deals as makeweight, they do make MP & Silva money, but they don’t necessarily see the benefit from it in coverage as the packages aren’t being bought for Scottish football. Which then, of course, led me to look at something else: which of the SPFL’s TV deals are actually resulting in exposure. The SPFL, of course, doesn’t actually promote who shows them internationally so to get this, one must rely on the most academic of sources - Wikipedia, which has a “List of SPFL Broadcasters” page.

According to this, the SPFL have 32 international TV deals from nations as diverse as Albania to Indonesia. Of those 32, as far as I can gather, the following are actually actively showing live games (or any coverage at all) - Albania’s Tring Sport, Australia’s BeIN Sports, Canada’s Sportsnet, China’s Tencent Sports (signed this year after LeTV went out of existence), Hungary’s Digisport, Israel’s Sport 5 and Singapore’s Eleven Sports Network (which barely counts seeing as it’s owned by MP & Silva). Austria and Germany show short clips (no live games or highlights package) through the streaming service Laola1, which does show live games from the Estonian Meistriliga. Two broadcasters (C More Sport Norway, ESPN Azerbaijan) appear to no longer exist. Four broadcasters simply don’t have the listings up for me to verify (France’s Canal+, Belgium’s Eleven Sports, Brazil’s ESPN Brazil and Setanta Sports Eurasia). The rest (nineteen) simply appear to own the rights and not show them or owned the rights, have allowed them to lapse and no-one has picked them back up - most notably in the USA.

That is, obviously, not really an especially good state of affairs. After all, there is little point in Neil Doncaster crowing about TV deals. And as much as there should be questions asked of Neil Doncaster (for a start, a 10 year deal? Where’s the incentive for MP & Silva to perform if they know they have the rights until 2023?), the real questions must be asked of MP & Silva and as to what checks the SPFL have on ensuring that MP & Silva are actually providing the SPFL with value.

Questions such as “Is the channel actually showing the SPFL after buying the package of rights” isn’t a question that should have to be asked by the SPFL, much less one that should have a fan checking things out for them. How’s about “Is the pick up of club streaming services which are region locking live games in the UK only affecting our TV deals abroad?” or “Is there a get out clause from MP and Silva given there’s another 5 years on the deal?” Everyone understands that the SPFL were pretty motivated sellers in 2013, but in 2017 the landscape is very different - the league is a higher standard, the matches more attractive and, if you’re that way inclined, you can even promote the “Old Firm”. Yet the SPFL’s International TV deals are still reflecting a reality that doesn’t exist any more. What was worth £2m in 2013 isn’t worth £2m any more but the incentive to drive a good deal that MP & Silva having originally paid the SPFL what the rights are worth now doesn’t exist.

The SPFL does little to improve matters itself - a simple thing such as having the TV Schedule on the website that can be organised by nation so that a viewer in Thailand can see what channel and when the game is on (such as is on the EPL website) isn’t there. That said, the clear problem isn’t to do with how rights are sold (which is fairly normal), it’s the lack of oversight that appears to happen with it. More than half of the broadcasting contracts the SPFL claims to have don’t exist or just aren’t being used.

That is madness. And, no matter how much people can talk the game up, if there’s no way to see the game, then there isn’t much point.

That’s something Neil Doncaster surely has to address.