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Private Television in Western Europe pp 136–150Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Television Sports Rights: Between Culture and Commerce

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Global Media Policy and Business ((GMPB))

Abstract

Since around the late 1980s, the liberalisation of European broadcasting markets prompted by the TWF Directive has, combined with the development of, first, satellite, and then, digital, broadcasting technology, resulted in a tremendous growth in the amount of sports broadcasting available to European television viewers. Across Europe as a whole, between 1989 and 1995, “sports coverage increased from 24,000 hours to some 58,000 hours” per year (Maguire, 1999: 144). In 1995, there were only three sports channels available in Europe; by 2000, there were around 60 different sports channels in operation around the continent (Papathanassopoulos, 2002). However, most of this increase has been driven by pay-television broadcasters. Over the last 20 years or so, European pay-television broadcasters, such as BSkyB and Canal+, have used sports rights, and football rights in particular, as a “battering ram” to open up and then dominate their respective national pay-television markets. In turn, the ever-increasing sums paid for football rights have, for the most part, been translated into spiralling salaries and astronomical transfer fees for players and managers at Europe’s biggest football clubs. Clearly, sport on television is big business

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Authors
  1. Petros Iosifidis
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  2. Paul Smith
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

    Karen Donders , Caroline Pauwels  & Jan Loisen ,  & 

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© 2013 Petros Iosifidis and Paul Smith

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Iosifidis, P., Smith, P. (2013). Television Sports Rights: Between Culture and Commerce. In: Donders, K., Pauwels, C., Loisen, J. (eds) Private Television in Western Europe. Palgrave Global Media Policy and Business. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137017550_10

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