Outlook: Football tactics

ANY DAY now Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB is expected to confirm that it is buying a 9.9 per cent stake in Leeds Sporting, the parent company of Leeds United. Another premier league side, Chelsea, is also in the satellite broadcaster's sights, even though the club denied yesterday that it had been involved in any talks.

Coming on top of Granada's purchase of a 9.9 per cent shareholding in Liverpool and renewed speculation that Michael Green's Carlton will buy a chunk of Arsenal, something is clearly stirring in the dressing room.

It is only three months since the vertical integration of football clubs and media groups appeared to have been stopped in its tracks by the Competition Commission's refusal to allow BSkyB to buy Manchester United. But the two sides have responded by devising a new game plan. Under Football Association rules, there is nothing to stop Mr Murdoch - or anyone else for that matter - buying 9.9 per cent stakes in all 20 English premiership football clubs.

The best way to look at such stake-building is as an each-way bet. For groups like BSkyB and Granada the financial outlay is small beer, but it buys them a seat on the board and sends out a warning signal to other would-be predators. In itself, this will not be enough to dictate club policy when the rights to broadcast football matches on pay TV come up for grabs again the season after next. But it gives the media groups an inside channel.

The recent ruling by the Restrictive Practices Court means that the Premier League is free, if it wishes, to sign a collective and exclusive deal with one pay-TV platform provider. When the current pounds 700m five-year deal was signed with BSkyB, even the big clubs chose the easy option of leaving it to Uncle Rupert to sort out.

But football has moved on as a business since then. The betting next time around is that a number of the big, fashionable clubs will wish to keep a slice of the action by retaining the option to sell broadcast rights to some matches themselves.

The likes of Manchester United would have no difficulty filling Old Trafford to capacity every week even if every single match were broadcast live. The same cannot be said for some of the smaller premiership clubs who have thus far hung on to the coat tails of their bigger brothers. The prospect, then, is of the rich clubs getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That may not be good news for the fabric of the game, but it helps to explain this renewed burst of corporate activity.

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