Its tender for national team matches for the 2010 to 2014 period proposes that part of the winning broadcaster’s fee is related directly to the size of audience the matches attract. The tender sets a base price minimum guarantee of €2.89 million per match – compared with the €5 million per match paid by TF1 in the present contract – but lays down a sliding scale, based on one viewer equating to €0.5 that would see broadcasters pay additional sums in the event of matches getting large audiences.
Assuming a broadcaster offered only the base price, an audience of 10 million viewers would still equate to a fee €5m, an audience of eight million €4m and so on. If a broadcaster offered a minimum guarantee of €5m – the same as now – then audiences would have to exceed 10 million for the sliding scale mechanism to come into play.
For the full story, see the next issue of TV Sports Markets.