Official Report 739KB pdf
A warm welcome back to the meeting. Our next agenda item is to take evidence on sporting events of national interest. We are joined by Ian Maxwell, chief executive of the Scottish Football Association.
My opening question is about your suggestion that
“any proposal to include qualifying matches under Group A of the Listed Events regime must be considered carefully given the significant commercial implications for Scottish football.”
When we look at the accounts of your body, the Union of European Football Associations and other organisations, it is quite difficult to see any trail of money and how such a change would impact on front-line Scottish football, so will you explain that in more detail?
I am happy to do that. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to come to discuss the subject.
You talk about a trail of money and, in effect, we have a number of income streams. Money from television rights goes into the big pot, which we use to promote, develop and grow Scottish football up and down the country. The approach is not necessarily siloed, where revenue would come in for a specific purpose, but the UEFA TV revenue that we receive is our single biggest income stream. Generally, the income that we receive through the men’s A squad—whether that is from gate receipts or commercial opportunities—adds to that, and that is the biggest single revenue driver for the Scottish Football Association. That money is used to fund women’s football up and down the country from national team level right through to grass roots; it funds boys’ grass-roots football and referee recruitment and development; and we have launched our own facilities fund. The funding all plays a part in that.
The Scottish Football Association is a business that, in an average year without European qualification or anything like that, will turn over about £50 million, so from a revenue perspective we are a small business. The challenge is that, although we are the national association for the biggest sport in the country by a considerable distance, we do not have anything like the funding that we would love to have in order to do what football can do up and down the country. We need to make the best use of the funding that we have.
We said in our letter to the committee that any change to the listed events scheme would reduce the commercial attractiveness and the commercial opportunity in the broadcasting market, which would have an impact. Ultimately, that impact would lead to the stopping of some football activity around the country.
Do I understand that UEFA gets the money for the broadcasting rights and it distributes that to you?
Yes.
What is the significant difference? I understand that commercial matters are involved, but is there a significant difference between what an online or private company would bid and what a public broadcaster would bid in terms of income?
Yes. Removing the ability for anybody who wants to have the rights to be able to bid for them reduces competition in the market. That reduces the competitive tension in the marketplace. If there is a free-to-air requirement, the subscription-based companies could bid for rights and show events free to air—there is nothing to stop them doing that—but their model is completely different from that. Around the country, I do not know of many national associations’ events where that applies. Usually, if an event is listed, it goes to a national broadcaster, such as the BBC, STV or whatever it may be.
Are you in favour of removing all the listed events that affect Scottish football?
What do you mean?
So that they could not show any of the football matches on the BBC, STV or public broadcasting channels.
Fundamentally, we want as much exposure as we can have, whether that is on the BBC or STV or in another form. That has to be our objective, because we want to grow the game, but we need to consider the implications of that change. That is our position.
Good morning, Ian. It is nice to see you again. I will not go on about the fact that you are a St Mirren legend; most people would not know that, but I ask you to take that into account when I ask my questions. This is not personal, but what the hell is the video assistant referee all about?
I come to my question on the issue that we are discussing. You say that television rights are a third of your turnover, but the convener is right that it is almost a quasi-secret society activity to try to trace the money from UEFA to your body. It was only from a press release that I managed to work out that the money is a third—or 33 per cent—of your budget. Is it not a bit of an issue for us as fans or as the committee that it is difficult for us to follow the money in our national game? You are saying that most of it goes into grass-roots football and women’s football, but it is difficult to follow the money when it comes from UEFA.
Obviously, the agreement with UEFA is commercially sensitive. Like all other national associations, we centralised all our rights. UEFA distributes them and sells them as best it can, and UEFA gives us a guaranteed amount off the back of that. I do not even know the amount that UEFA gets for our rights; I am not party to that information, which is commercially sensitive between UEFA and the broadcaster. I do not know what that number is. The only number that I know is the number that UEFA gives us and, because of commercial sensitivity, we cannot get into that.
The paperwork that was provided refers to a report in 2009, when the Scottish FA said that it thought that the impact would be a loss of £12 million. That was pre-centralisation and a long time before I came into my role.
That report also said that free-to-air TV was probably the best route.
I do not know how it could be the best route if it was being said that the impact would be a loss of £12 million in Scottish FA revenue.
The report said that because of the impact on the game and—as you said—because the game would be seen by as many people as possible. In the end, more people would see the game.
There is no doubt that, as the figures show, if we are talking just about viewers, free to air makes sense, but from our perspective this is not just about viewers—it is about activity. When we talk about the revenue that the Scottish FA gets and what we spend our money on, I want to be clear that we do not fund professional, elite clubs to any significant degree. The biggest amount of funding that they get is through club academy Scotland, and that funding is based on criteria that they need to meet.
As I said, the income that we get goes to the men’s and women’s national teams from A squad down to youth level. It goes into grass-roots development for boys and girls and into the support that we give our national associations, and it funds the staff we have around the country who are helping to grow the game and the programmes that we have in our communities.
As a business, we do not separate out money that comes in to be spent on particular purposes. We are not big enough to do that and do not have the resources to do that. We need to decide annually where the priorities are and where we need to divert our revenue to in order to have the biggest impact.
As I said, we are a small business in financial terms, with responsibility for more than 1 million people who regularly engage in football in some way, shape or form throughout Scotland. Impacting that positively with the finances that we have is difficult, and we need to be very sure and very clear about what we are doing.
The situation is not simple. We do not get money in that then goes out to professional clubs or to help St Mirren or whoever to sign players; that is not how we work as an association.
I know that.
Our fundamental objective is promoting the power of football, growing the game and making an impact on communities. That takes a variety of forms and involves a variety of activity.
The recent scenario with Viaplay was a bit of a sham. In April 2022, Viaplay got the rights through the centralised UEFA deal and then suddenly—because of whatever happened at Viaplay and because it withdrew from various markets—we had a situation where everybody was trying to watch matches on YouTube. Was the SFA doing that feed?
It was through Viaplay.
We ended up doing that, but it was madness to end up in that position for our national team—yes, everybody could see matches, but that was not on a perfect platform for watching them. Do we open ourselves up to such scenarios when companies bid for rights but we do not know how they go about that and there is difficulty with the transparency in finding out about that? We can end up not being able to see our national team’s games or using a platform that is not really acceptable.
Which platform is acceptable is an interesting point. If we look at the demographic now, kids spend their time on YouTube and on social media platforms. They do not sit and watch 90 minutes of football in the way that we as the older generation do. That is a change in the broadcast market. Maybe YouTube was not ideal, but the benefit was that it was free to air and the viewer numbers were really good. People got used to that over the two or three games that were on. There is probably a bit of preconceived thinking of, “Oh well, it is on YouTube—that can’t be right.”
The issue is about the type of production that it was.
I accept that.
There was no build-up to the game, although it involved our national team. That would not happen to any other nation. There was no build-up to the game and no analysis of the game—there was just the game. Surely you admit that that was not acceptable.
That was not good enough. There were specific circumstances because of the issues that Viaplay was facing. Northern Ireland had the same challenges, and I think that Wales did, too. You are right that, because of the issues that Viaplay was facing during those matches, the production and the service around the games were not good enough. However, I do not think that I would necessarily discount YouTube as a platform.
The issue was more the production values of what was on offer.
I accept that.
I understand that the biggest broadcaster in Scotland is slowly but surely becoming YouTube.
I was surprised when you mentioned that some of the money goes to referee training and recruitment. It will be interesting to see how that works.
We are now in a position where we have the best of both worlds. The BBC is showing it free to air and it has managed to get the rights. There is a multimillion-pound deal with ITV in England. Do you think that, if it comes to bidding for rights again, the BBC as an organisation should look at it not just as BBC Scotland but as the BBC for the whole of the United Kingdom, and make a bid as such an organisation, to try to make it free to air? BBC Scotland’s budget is much like your organisation’s budget—it is a small fish in a big ocean.
I would absolutely encourage the BBC to do that. As I said, we want as much exposure as we can get for our national teams, but we need to assess that alongside the commercial imperative and commercial reality that exists. I have no problem with that. The BBC should be looking at that possibility—I would like to think that it is doing so, having seen the increase in our viewer numbers, given the world cup campaign that we are in the midst of. I am sure that the numbers for the Denmark and Greece games that are coming up in November will be as high as the BBC has seen, and I hope that that can convince it that it is worth making the right commercial offering to UEFA.
There are other options around that as well. With the Viaplay deal, S4C, the Welsh-language channel, had free-to-air rights for those matches, so there is an opportunity. It does not always have to be the primary broadcaster that has it on free to air. S4C effectively did a deal with Viaplay, which owns the rights. S4C came along and said, “We want to show some of the matches on a Welsh-speaking-only channel.” There was then a commercial negotiation between them that involved Viaplay saying, “Well, if we do that, we will lose X pounds, so you need to give us X pounds for the right to do that.” That is not the same as buying the full package of rights and paying for it.
No, I get that.
There is no reason why a channel such as BBC Alba, as a Gaelic-language channel, could not do a similar deal, which would allow the games to be free to air across the country.
There can be various bids in order to air games free, but, as I say, the budget for that is challenging. One of the things that we do not talk about is that, when games are behind a paywall, many people out there access them but do not pay to watch legitimately. Surely that has an impact on sporting events as well.
That is a challenge generally across broadcasting. Piracy is a big issue. When you speak to any of the broadcasters, dealing with piracy is the biggest issue on their agenda at the moment. It does have an impact, and not just in sport. When you speak to somebody and you ask them what they are watching on the television, the next question is to ask what channel it is on, because everybody is paying subscriptions for different channels to watch different TV programmes. That is a huge issue for broadcasters and it is something that they are working on. If the Scottish FA can work in partnership with them to address that, we will do.
Good, because I would say that it is a particular issue with sport. A lot of people do it to access sport in general.
I think that they do it to access sport and TV more generally.
That has a long-term impact on a third of your income.
It will do. Who knows what the broadcast market will look like in 15 or 20 years. I mentioned earlier that youngsters do not watch TV and do not sit and engage with 90 minutes of football now. They have their iPad on at the same time; they have their phone on at the same time; they are watching clips of things rather than sitting and engaging for 90 minutes.
Basically, the SFA’s opinion on free-to-air television is “you pays your money, you gets a deal”. Is that it?
The SFA’s opinion on free-to-air television is that we want as many people to watch the games as possible, but there is a commercial reality that we are involved in. We want to have a conversation about what that looks like.
I do not want us to get bogged down in football specifically, because we have a bigger sporting challenge as a country that we are not doing well enough with, and I do not want this to become the single issue that we look at.
If you look at investment in sport across the country, there was to be a doubling of the sports budget, which has not happened yet. Investment from sportscotland through the Scottish Government in sports generally is at best staying the same, which, in real terms, means that it is actually going down, because the cost of facilities and the cost to participate are increasing. Therefore, we are seeing less activity at a time when everybody wants the country to be more active. We all talk very passionately about the benefits of physical activity and the impact that it can have on individuals and communities.
10:30I think that there is a bigger conversation to be had. If we thought for a minute that the BBC would do a deal with UEFA, and knowing that UEFA would come to us and say, “Because of this, your money is reduced”—because that is the commercial reality that we live in—we would want to have a wider conversation about recompense and what that looks like, to make sure that we do not have to stop activity. Stopping activity cannot be anybody’s objective—that would not make any sense, given the times that we are living through.
We need to consider what else are we doing alongside that in relation to sport, including prevention and its other benefits, and how we increase funding into that. I know that I represent a football association, and we talk passionately about this all the time, but there is no better investment that a Government can make in order to have happier, healthier and more active people. Football and sport more generally can help the Scottish Government to achieve what it wants with the framework. It is about how we wrap that up into a bigger conversation about where we are going as a country, rather than focusing on a particular isolated sport and what that means.
Ian, you have managed to segue into something that we both agree on. You seem to be even more silky in the committee than you were on the football field.
Thank you. I should have declared an interest as I am a member of Motherwell Football Club Community Trust. I will bring in Mr Halcro Johnston.
I do not want to go over the same points again, but as somebody who watches quite a lot of football, one of the great frustrations is the point that George Adam makes, first about the standard of production, but also about the fact that, nowadays if you want to follow particular clubs you need to have almost 18 different subscriptions. That is a great frustration for a lot of people. First, do you think that that model will change? What seems to happen is that a new entrant comes into the broadcasting arena, bids high to get sports—whether it is the Scotland games or whatever it happens to be—shows them and then, because they have the subscribers, moves on and somebody else comes in. Is that likely to continue?
I am torn on this next question. I watched the Scottish cup final in a pub—as people will know, Aberdeen won—and there is a huge camaraderie from that but it is also vital for our hospitality sector. However, I am also conscious that that excludes a huge number of people. What do you think the impact of having free-to-air games is on the next generation? If Scotland is on free-to-air television and the team is also successful, what impact does that have on the take-up of the sport, participation and that kind of thing? I will leave it there for now and let you answer.
To answer the first question on the subscription model, you are right that there have been new entrants, although there have not been that many recently. Scottish football has been fortunate. We always consider the number of subscriptions that people will need to watch football. If you take Scottish football at the minute, men’s and women’s national team games are on BBC, Sky is the main partner of the league, and we have Premier Sports as a league partner and also as a Scottish cup partner. The main major competitions in the Scottish Professional Football League, Scottish Women’s Football League and the Scottish Gas Scottish cup and the Premier Sports cup are all on either BBC, Sky or Premier. So while that is two subscription broadcasters, it could be worse—we try to make decisions that limit the amount that we will have to ask supporters to pay.
What that looks like in the future is a good question. Obviously, we are a national association within UEFA and broadcast rights, value and what that landscape looks like is a regular topic of conversation. That is about how people will be watching football in years to come.
You talked about the impact on the next generation. I have a 24-year-old son who will sit and watch some football, but he is doing two or three other things at the same time. That is just the way that the world is now and we need to be aware of that. A lot of sports are looking at their offering and how they engage that younger audience in particular.
A big driver, and we saw this off the back of England winning the women’s Euros fairly recently, is success on the pitch. That success on the pitch is the biggest driver of positivity and engagement around the country. That is where this is all linked. If we invest the revenue that we get in our academies or if we are helping grow the grass-roots game, that will ultimately develop the players who will be successful on the pitch in 20 or 25 years’ time, which will help to grow that engagement. It is all a cycle. We cannot split things out and look at them in isolation.
The positivity that we have seen around the national team for the past four or five years has been fantastic. We have a great chance of qualifying for the world cup next year and that will continue to grow engagement. It was not that long ago that we were in nations league C, we were playing Kazakhstan, and it felt that we played Israel every other week at that point and there were 17,000 or 18,000 people at Hampden. That also has an impact on how we can develop the game. There is a chunky difference between 17,000 sales target for a game and 50,000, as we are seeing now, and what we can do with all that revenue. As I said, that all goes back into the development of football up and down the country.
These conversations are always on-going and we always need to be aware of the subscription model and not putting supporters under too much pressure at a time when we know the financial challenges facing everybody up and down the country.
You talk about younger people. Last night, there may well have been people reading notes for this morning’s committee and watching games at the same time—it is not just young people who get distracted by such things.
I want to go on to what the alternatives are and what the impacts will be. There was one game last night on Sky and there were a lot of games on the club channels, such as Killie TV, Celtic TV and the like. Do you see an opportunity further down the line for the clubs? Do you get a share of that revenue if the game is shown on a club television channel?
No, they are league matches so that sits within SPFL, but even from a league perspective, the SPFL does not get any revenue. That is an additional club revenue stream and it is becoming more important, particularly when you consider the number of supporters of our clubs around the world who want to watch football matches.
The obvious question then is, if there is the change that is being suggested, which you are opposed to, what happens? I represent the Highlands and Islands. We have the Highland league, which is very important. Orkney, where I am from, is in the North Caledonian league. Do you see an impact on those leagues, clubs and communities?
There is just an impact generally across football. The simple reality is that, if our funding reduces, some activity must stop. We would have to make some difficult decisions on what that looks like. Look at what we are trying to achieve. We are the sole bidders for the women’s world cup and hopefully we will be confirmed with the rest of the home nations as the hosts for that in 2035. It would make no sense not to be able to engage as much as we can with girls’ and women’s football over the next 10 years to make that a milestone event. That is a huge event to bring to the country and its impact would be very significant. It defies logic to make a decision that we know will negatively impact the amount of activity that we can undertake in the girls’ and women’s space. That is an example.
I cannot sit here and say that if that money reduces this is what the impact would be specifically. What I can say is that it would have a significant impact given that football activity up and down the country would be impacted and would have to stop as a result unless something else comes along to fill that hole. That is my point. We should not just be talking about filling in that hole. We should be talking about the bigger sporting landscape and how we make ourselves a sporting nation. We are a sporting nation because a lot of people watch football, a lot of people go to football, but we are not a sporting nation inasmuch as we do not participate anything like our European counterparts. We are miles away from where they are in terms of physical activity. How do we change that?
It was a great frustration when we had the Olympics and even the Commonwealth Games. I always felt that we did not build on that legacy. I have been involved in sports clubs and even their national bodies—this is not necessarily football but other sports—do not take advantage of the huge coverage and success of those events and build on it.
On your point about how you take things forward and build on events, are you looking at other potential revenue streams? Are there other ways that you could, if not plug the gap, at least do things? I am sure that you are looking at them anyway because you are always looking, but what other areas are you are investigating? I appreciate that there is a limit on what you are able to do around the broadcast side if UEFA does the contracts and given the fact that the league is a different organisation.
We are always looking commercially at how we can improve investment in the country and into Scottish football. It is a challenge. As I said, we are a small business so even a 10 per cent increase in commercial revenue, which is a big percentage from a business perspective, is still only £4 million or £5 million. That does not let us do a huge amount because of the size of business that we are. We will do as much as we can. We have committed to doing as much as we can.
We have launched our own facilities fund and through our own investment, through philanthropic investment, through work with Government and partnerships with businesses, we want to raise £50 million over the next five years to improve facilities up and down the country. That has been borne out of the current situation where, because of the fiscal challenges that Government and local authorities face, there has been very limited investment in our local facilities at a time when we are trying to grow the game.
You touched on the impact and making the best of the impact that these mega events have. That is great in theory but when people want to play football, the first thing that they need is somewhere to play. At the moment we are seeing a decline in facilities up and down the country at a point when football participation numbers continue to grow—those two things do not align and do not make sense. We have taken it upon ourselves to address that; we know that there is a problem and have asked ourselves what we want to do to try to fix it. That is another area where there is an impact: if there is a significant reduction in our income, that facility investment would have to stop, which again sets us back because we are not giving the people who want to play the ability to do so. It is all linked. It is a sporting ecosystem that we need to make sure we are developing and driving as properly as we can.
So, there is a bit of good news but the worry is that we might not be able to take advantage of it.
My last question is around the commercial relationships. How have those changed? I am thinking, obviously, about sponsorship as well as other commercial relationships that the SFA has. What is the picture now in terms of proving that those are successful and is that getting more difficult?
Commercially, we are in a very good place. When you think about cup sponsorship and national team sponsors, most of the major assets that we have as a business are sold. We are not permitted under UEFA regulations to put a sponsor on the front of the national team shirt and there would be a big debate if we were ever allowed to do so. I am sure that people would have an opinion on that. From a commercial perspective, we are driving revenues as much as we possibly can.
We are having more consults more regularly at Hampden. We are looking at the stadium to see how we can generate more revenue from that, not just as a football stadium. Glasgow Warriors played there last December and they are going to play there this December. We are looking at the stadium as a big revenue driver. There is a commercial imperative around the stadium as well because, like every stadium across the country, Hampden is of an age. It needs investment and it needs significant amounts of money annually just to keep the lights on. We need to be aware of that.
It is part of my job at the SFA to make sure that the commercial income that we receive is as high as it possibly can be, and that is something that we are very focused on.
Thanks, Ian. I will leave it there.
Good morning, Mr Maxwell. I see that Calvin Harris is doing a concert in the summer at Hampden park. That was announced yesterday. It is great news.
I am up for that, Neil.
We have talked a lot about the balance between accessibility and cash, and the impact on young people. We obviously want to showcase the game—the men’s game, the women’s game—to the next generation to inspire them to get involved in football. Equally, it is not just about that, because we want to provide them with the youth coaching opportunities to enable them to be the footballers of the future. There is a difficult balance to be struck: we all want matches to be free to air and we all want to ensure that there are proper resources for Scottish football.
At the moment, we have free-to-air qualifiers on the BBC, and we have the resource that follows from that. I think that George Adam described that as the best of both worlds. Is that the optimum situation?
Absolutely. The optimum situation would be free to air with a bit more money coming towards us for the television rights, but that is something for UEFA to discuss. What we have at the moment gives us the best of both worlds, because we have a secure level of income and as much exposure as we can get.
10:45
Obviously, if the situation were to change, and we did not have free-to-air broadcasts, we would need to look at it again. This is the first time that the committee has taken oral evidence on the issue.
On the financial challenges that you mentioned earlier, the Scottish Government promised to double the sports budget more generally but that has not happened—in fact, there has been a real-terms cut. That is the wider context, which I think is important. Sport is not part of this committee’s remit, but broadcasting is, and we need to consider it in that context. The Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, Angus Robertson, has also said that the Scottish Government supports the men’s and women’s qualifiers being listed as category A events. Given the concerns that have been raised about funding, has the Scottish Government given an indication that, in principle, it would meet any shortfall that might arise from that listing?
No such commitment has been given. A question has been asked, and we are keen to understand what that would mean, but no commitment has been given.
Okay, that is helpful to know.
My last question seeks clarity on the process with UEFA. Obviously, we need to strike the correct balance, and the discussions that must take place have to take account of commercial sensitivities. However, let me put an example to you, for the sake of argument. If, in the bidding process, Sky Sports bid £5 million and the BBC bid £4.9 million—a £100,000 margin—then simply selecting the highest bidder could mean that you get the balance wrong. Is that factor taken into account, or can it be, to help achieve the right balance?
That is a good point, and there definitely would be a conversation in that regard. We have conversations with UEFA at the point when the bidding process is on-going, but the bids have never been anywhere near each other in terms of value, so that discussion has never needed to be had.
UEFA fundamentally wants as many eyes on European football as possible. It wants to grow and develop the game. When it is assessing bids, it will look at the financial benefit but it will also look at potential viewership. You have to take that all together and look at all those things in the round. In the situation that you describe, we would definitely be keen to have that conversation with UEFA and I am sure that it would engage with us before it made a decision, because—whether we are talking about UEFA, the Scottish FA, or any club at any level—the aim is to grow the game.
Thank you.
I am interested in the alternative business models that the SFA can see elsewhere. I understand that you are constrained by UEFA, in a sense, but what other business models have you looked at and thought might work in terms of maximising audience and generating the revenue that you need?
From a broadcast point of view?
Yes, but you can be broader than that if you want.
At the moment, we are pretty focused on maintaining what we have. As I touched on earlier, UEFA is always looking at what the next step or the next stage in the broadcast market will be. Not that long ago, it set up UEFA TV, and there have been some free-to-air matches on that channel. Every so often there is a conversation about Scottish football and whether there should be a Scottish football TV model. However, that only works if it is a subscription channel—we could not do that on a free-to-air basis.
It could have free-to-air games occasionally, mixed in with the subscription stuff.
It could, yes, but the value comes to the channel through people wanting to watch the high-profile matches, so you need to strike that balance. There have been no real, serious discussions about another business model, but there are always discussions about what the commercial landscape and the broadcasting landscape look like and how other countries are dealing with those issues.
So, having SFA TV is not a consideration at the minute.
No, that is not under active consideration at the minute. However, I would not say that anything is ever off the table. You always have to be aware of what the options might be and what the landscape might look like in the future, because we just do not know what the subscription model generally will look like over the coming years.
What about collaboration? You have presumably talked to the FA, the Welsh FA, and other football associations in Britain and Ireland about some collaboration. Is there anything there? There is a lot of commercial muscle in those football associations, including, of course, those in Ireland.
We have never had a conversation about doing anything joined up. Again, that only makes sense if it is a commercially viable opportunity, and for that to happen, it has to be subscription based.
It would give you more control.
Over the longer term, there could be something. As I touched on earlier, we have league games, cup games, league cup games, women’s league games, women’s cup games and national team games. There is a lot of inventory, and every national association will be looking at that over the longer term. The deal that we have with UEFA is until 2032. We will be looking beyond that and asking what things will look like at that point. Those conversations will happen in conjunction with UEFA.
Would UEFA see it as a threat if the SFA, the FA, the Irish FA, and the Welsh FA all got together? Would that be seen as an attempt to compete?
No, I do not think that UEFA would see it as a threat. I think that UEFA would think about what was the best thing for football.
UEFA is a huge commercial entity. We have a bill in front of us at the minute in terms of the—
It is, but in terms of the broadcast revenue as a standalone sum, whatever UEFA receives goes out through the centralisation deal to all the national associations. UEFA’s income is generated by the European championships, which are every four years, and by Champions league. The broadcast revenue that UEFA receives is not a revenue generator for it because it distributes it across the national associations.
I do not think that it would necessarily see your proposal as a threat. If the case was strong enough, it would potentially see it as an opportunity because, as the governing body for European football, it wants to grow the game.
Have you ever done a calculation of the number of viewers being excluded because of the current arrangements, as opposed to matches being free to air? There will be a particular group that is unable to watch if—
If it is on a subscription?
Yes. Some people may just be seeing highlights of the qualifiers on YouTube, as opposed to being able to watch the matches. Of course, I was interested in what you said about the younger demographic—who it is important to sell football to—preferring to view the highlights packages on YouTube.
In smaller chunks, yes, definitely.
Does that present some commercial challenges down the line, even in terms of subscription channels selling football?
I do not think that anybody can tell you what the broadcast market will look like in 20 years’ time. If you look at the technology that we have—
We have had broadcasters in front of us recently, and I can concur with your sentiment. They do not know what their future looks like.
Yes. It is not outwith the realms of possibility that, at some point in the future, we will all be sitting at home with a virtual reality headset on and feeling like we are in the stadium.
At the game, sitting in our armchairs.
That is not far from becoming a reality. The technology moves on constantly and we just need to make sure that we are up to date and aware of the challenges that are coming.
The key thing that I am taking from your answers is that a different business model is not on the agenda at the minute, and something more grandiose is certainly not on the agenda. Collaboration across the football authorities in the United Kingdom and Ireland is not on the agenda either.
From a broadcast perspective, it is not.
You are quite content with the current arrangement.
I think that we are where we are, but we need to keep looking forward and understand what will come down the line in future years.
Okay.
As members have no further questions, I will ask a final one.
I do not frequently go to football matches or take part in the sport, but the centre of excellence at Braidhurst high school is in my constituency. I have visited it many times, and I see the excellent work that it does and the altruistic impact that it has in the community and the wider school.
You are trying to balance your ambitions for football with issues of commercial viability. I appreciate that you must have an income stream, but it seems to me that getting that audience, particularly in women’s football, is what UEFA and yourselves should be striving for. We know the phrase, “You have to see it to be it”, and we have seen the importance of that with the impact that the Lionesses have had on English women’s football.
You and Mr Kerr talked about different business models. Do you think that there is too much emphasis on maximising the commercial value, and not enough on the other, altruistic aims of the football associations in each country?
I do not think that there is too much emphasis on commercial value. We are always cognisant of both aspects. For example, we made a decision to move the women’s games to Hampden. The men play there, and we felt that it was right that the women play there. However, through conversations with the players and staff involved in the women’s team, we realised that we did the wrong thing for the right reasons, because, given where the girls’ and women’s game is at the moment, it is more important to take the matches around the country. We had a game on Tuesday night in Dunfermline that was attended by 6,000 people—it was a good game and the team played really well. We have had games at Easter Road and we are looking at other places around the country where we can take girls’ and women’s football. That is not a commercial decision; we make a significant annual investment in women’s football that does not, at this time, return anything commercially, but we are happy to do that and we are committed to doing that.
I get the question that you are asking about the balance with regard to commercial value, but we are also engaged in a lot of activity that has no commercial benefit but is about growing and developing the game up and down the country. What we have done with girls’ and women’s football is a prime example of that. We have asked what is right to help grow the game and what makes the most sense at this point in time. From the perspective of the women’s national team, the priority is taking the game around the country and getting more girls and women in local communities out to matches. I do not know the last time that an international match was played in Dunfermline—it will have been a while—but we are happy to arrange that. The club was delighted, the community was delighted and, as I said, there was a crowd of nearly 6,000, which is significant for a women’s A team friendly match at this point in time.
We are always considering how we grow the game; we cannot always simply think about commercial revenue.
Finally, there is a voluntary code of conduct for rights owners, which the SFA currently has not signed up to. Is that something that you are considering? Is there a reason why you have not engaged with that process?
I will be totally honest and say that that was not something that I was aware of.
Perhaps you could write back to us on that issue.
I will find out more and get back to you on that one.
Thank you very much, and thanks for your attendance this morning. We now move into private session.
10:56 Meeting continued in private until 11:01.Previous
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