There aren’t many chairmen of a top flight football club who are frequently found on social media but Dave Cormack is an exception. However, the Dons supremo might have been advised to steer clear of Twitter on Sunday night after releasing his afternoon statement defending the current SPFL deal that is on the table from Sky.
Cormack would have found plenty of critics of the proposed £30million-a-season extension to the current agreement in place with the broadcasting giants. The deal on offer would see the maximum number of games they are entitled to show increase from 48 to 60 a campaign – beginning from 2024-25 – with annual payments increased from £25million to £30m by 2028-29.
In addition, there would be the option of two additional bundles of 10 games at a cost of £4m each and if Sky decided to trigger that then they could screen 80 games a season with the deal going up to £38m per year. But there is of course no guarantees they would take that up and in that case it would be offered to other broadcasters.
As one of two clubs yet to give the proposed deal the thumbs up along with Livingston, Rangers managing director Stewart Robertson was critical of the fact the SPFL hadn’t gone to market and put the rights out to tender. He pointed to bigger financial deals in countries such as Sweden which Cormack addressed in his statement, highlighting the fact that their deal is to show EVERY live game which could have an impact on matchday revenue.
Cormack made a series of points in a lengthy statement with many seized upon by critics, with the Reds chief even taking time out to respond to some. Here, Record Sport looks at some of those picked up on.
Cormack said: “It was recently reported that Sweden is getting £48million a season versus the current SPFL deal of about £25m. These reports state that Malmo gets double what Rangers got for last season’s second place finish. The reality is that Sweden has sold all 240 top league games per season to live television. The SPFL currently sells only 48. All of Malmo’s home games are live on television. SPFL premiership clubs are committed to only four (soon to be five) live television games at home.”
This point was immediately challenged by former Motherwell media man Grant Russell on a subject he has been passionate about since his days at Fir Park. He wrote: “Can’t believe I’m reading this from a club chairman. The SPFL sells away the rights to all 228 games, of which 48 are broadcast. That’s the fact.”
Cormack included a graph (below) to illustrate how the SPFL deal compared favourably with others, saying: “The chart below compares similar leagues to Scotland. The SPFL’s current, proposed, and potential broadcasting deals of up to £38 million per season shows a significantly higher value per game the SPFL is getting against comparable countries. More than double that of Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark; and in the case of Norway almost four times more.”
But SPFL Mediawatch rubbished this assertion. He wrote: “This chart is just wild for a number of reasons. It also completely ignores the fact these leagues will sign much improved deals in the interim period, especially in the Netherlands – which will almost certainly hit over £100m per season from 2025-26. First off, the TV deal will not be £30m for 60 games in 2024-25. It’s £29.5m by the end of the deal in 2029, so it’s actually around the £27m mark. The £38m figure is really misleading. It’s £29.5m in 2028-29 but only IF Sky agree to take those two packages. Considering they rarely show 48 games now, there’s very little chance they’ll take 80 in two years’ time. So at very best it could be £37.5m per season.”
Cormack highlighted the potential impact on attendances even if they could get a greater deal which included all games. He said: “This begs the question; would SPFL premiership clubs be willing to provide every home game live in order to get the total value of any broadcasting deal much, much higher? The simple answer is no, most clubs don’t have the appetite to provide anything like 19 home league games live on television. Why? Because it would cannabalise season ticket sales, gate income, hospitality, and retail sales, never mind dramatically impacting on the atmosphere at our games.”
That was challenged by Richard Wilson who said: “Fun fact – Aberdeen put how much they make from season ticket sales in their accounts. Using the 2018/19 sales, we’ll rebound up them making £3.9m on this. Second point – if we use the Eredivisie as an example, most cubs actually saw their attendances RISE once every game went on TV under the current deal. But, for Aberdeen’s sake, let’s use the worse case scenario. That was Twente (Enschede) who lost around a sixth of their attendance at a point. If you applied that to Aberdeen, they’d lose £650,000 in season ticket revenue. Multiply that by 12 and for our Aberdeen break even value, selling every game would need to make the league an extra £7.8m a season. Again - this is a worse case scenario. Ajax, Feyenoord, PSV basically saw no change. Smaller sides Hercales, VVV and ADO saw rises.”
Cormack said: “Even if we wanted to sell every SPFL premiership game live to television, there is no broadcaster out there, given that we are in the UK and compete with the EPL and EFL, with any interest in taking more than 60-80 games per season live from the SPFL that would be willing to pay enough to outweigh the erosion of other income streams.”
But Wilson countered: “Sky aren’t likely to want to buy ever game but what hasn’t been presented is the logic behind why there doesn’t seem to be an interest in finding out. If Sky really wouldn’t have any interest in showing more than 48 games a season, why wouldn’t PPVing the rest of the games be permitted? Would Sky (or anyone) offer any more money for the rights to show everything?”
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