Ingrid Deltenre, the director general of the European Broadcasting Union, the consortium of free-to-air broadcasters, said that legislation to prevent certain sporting events from being exclusively shown on pay-television should be applied more broadly, and could avert a ‘bubble’ in the value of sports media rights.
Deltenre said that the strategies being deployed in the sports industry put too high a value on fast profits, and suggested that this could be leading towards a crash in the value of the sports rights.
“This short-termism is one reason why there is such a high turnover of managers and coaches – especially in football,” she said. “Worryingly, these developments show all the characteristics of a typical bubble. In my view this is an extremely precarious scenario that is comparable to the property bubble and the dot com bubble.”
Deltenre said that regulations requiring sports events to be broadcast free-to-air – ‘listed events’ regulations – could help avoid this.
“A free-to-air requirement on sports that are on this slippery slope would put the brakes on and restore common sense,” she said.
Deltenre said that the EBU would continue striving to acquire sports rights for its members, “Because sport can make a valuable contribution to the development of a society. Because sport is an integral part of the programming of a public broadcaster (…) Because public broadcasters are important to help overcome harmful developments in the commercialization of sports.”