Page 101 - Sport Culture and the Media

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share of audiences in Britain for its two sports channels alone. Combe argues
that with free-to-air public broadcasters like the BBC restricted by the political
imperative of holding down the licence fee, and their commercial counterparts
required to compete in a more aggressive ‘audience sale’ market, BSkyB has
been especially well placed to win broadcast rights auctions where the principal
bargaining tool is the capacity to make an offer that is very hard to refuse, and
which few if any competitors can match:
BSkyB dominates the area of premium programmes with its strangle-
hold on Hollywood films and sporting events . . . In terms of consumer
welfare, the multi-channel industry structure diminishes consumer pro-
tection and undermines the fundamental concept of pluralism in a
democratic society.
(Combe 1997: 19)

The deleterious consequences for media companies and, ultimately, for sport,
of the hyperinflation of broadcast rights have been noted already, but the
impact of this exercise of economic power in sports television on viewers is also
regarded by Combe as less than liberating:
The stranglehold on sports rights enjoyed by BSkyB has changed the
economics of broadcasting such events and transformed the organization
of the events themselves to fit in with the criteria set by television. The
continuing domination of BSkyB is as unsatisfactory as was the old BBC/
ITV duopoly. Now, large numbers of viewers are excluded from seeing
major events on purely economic grounds. The imminent arrival of digital
television will set off another round of negotiations between broadcasters
and sporting bodies with the OFT [Office of Fair Trading] casting an
enquiring eye over the outcomes.
(Combe 1997: 21)
Murdoch’s £623 million bid in 1998 for Manchester United, the world’s best
known and richest football club, highlighted the economic desirability of
simultaneously owning both broadcast rights to sport and the sports teams that
are being broadcast (Brown and Walsh 1999). Despite enthusiastic support by
Murdoch newspapers like The Times and The Sun, the bid was opposed by the
Blair Labour Government (despite its warm relationship with Murdoch) and
blocked ‘in the public interest’ by the (then) UK Monopolies and Mergers
Commission. The grounds were that it would reduce competition in the broad-
casting industry (Murdoch would be on both sides of the negotiating table in
buying and selling TV rights) and that it would damage the already weakened
fabric of English football by exacerbating the inequalities between the clubs
in the Premier League and the rest. The Commission was unpersuaded by