James Bisgrove reveals Rangers alternative 'intelligence' to SPFL over Sky TV deal as Ibrox chief laments missed chance
Neil Doncaster unveiled a new agreement with the broadcaster that is worth £150m.
Rangers commercial director James Bisgrove insists the SPFL should have followed the Champions League and Europa League and run a "competitive process" before agreeing the latest Sky TV deal.
SPFL chief Neil Doncaster unveiled the new agreement on Tuesday which is worth £30m per season and will show up to 60 SPFL matches exclusively live each campaign from 2024/25 - more than ever before - with scope to increase this over the term of the deal. It also means Premiership clubs will be able to sell pay-per-view streams within the UK and Ireland of up to five league home games per season.
Following the announcement, Bisgrove has laid out the alternative path Rangers had hoped the league would take before the deal with the broadcaster was rubber stamped. He reckons Doncaster and the other top executives at the SPFL could have reached out to the likes of Amazon, DAZN and BT Sport in a bid to find the best deal for the Scottish game.
He told The Rangers Review : "Stewart [Robertson, managing director] and I were in the SPFL Premiership clubs meeting and asked how can we, as a group of clubs, as a league, be sure that this is the best value in the market when we haven’t engaged with the other players in that market? The information and the intelligence that we’d got suggests that very recently other big rights that were in the market created and had competitive tension.
"You’ve got BT Sport and their joint venture with Discovery, you’ve got Viaplay and NENT, you’ve got DAZN. And there are others further afield, the likes of Amazon.
"We’ve said all along we think Sky are a great partner. They’re a brilliant partner for Scottish football but to give everyone assurance that the value is as high as it possibly can be, you’ve got to take this to the market.
"There's a reason why TEAM Marketing that run the UEFA Champions League, Europa League tenders, go to the market every time. They run a competitive process, it’s the reason why the Premier League do that."
Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack was among the leading defenders of the the deal on offer from Sky. In a lengthy statement ahead of approval he stated that fact Sweden and other nations outside of the European superpower nations sell much more games as part of their deal.
He stated that the 60-game package was worth much more per game - in excess of £500,000. Speaking on Cormack's comments, Bisgrove added: "The other area where I think we’ve absolutely missed a trick is being more innovative on our packaging.
"I’ve seen reports about 60 games and the value per game but actually that’s a complete red herring because with the exclusivity Sky have, it’s the other games that are locked away, so why have we not looked at different packages like the Premier League have done and been more innovative and more commercially savvy with the way that we’ve taken that to the market?"
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