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ITV battles to find sponsors for World Cup

James Morrison
Sunday 07 April 2002 18:00 BST
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ITV is engaged in a last-minute rush to find a sponsor for its World Cup coverage after the collapse of negotiations with the tournament's 15 official backers. Following nine months of failed talks with multinationals including McDonald's and Coca-Cola, ITV's main shareholders, Granada and Carlton, have all-but abandoned hopes of wooing a high-profile company into bankrolling this summer's broadcasts.

Their conundrum leaves the troubled network, already buffeted by the collapse of its multi-channel platform, ITV Digital, with just eight weeks to find a backer. ITV, which was obliged to give the official World Cup sponsors first refusal before casting the net wider, has been forced to cut its asking price to £4m, 10 per cent of the price it reputedly paid for the rights to screen the championships.

Network chiefs are preparing to slash the price further, or even split what was meant to be a comprehensive rights package into bite-sized chunks customised to suit the individual demands of prospective investors.

Among the factors being blamed for the lack of interest is the realisation that, as the tournament takes place in Japan and South Korea, many key matches will kick off early in the morning when audiences, and hence brand visibility, are at their lowest.

It is understood that ITV1 had to wage a lengthy battle with BBC1 over which channel should be allowed to show which games live – a stalemate that wrecked its hopes of presenting an early rights offer to potential buyers.

Alan Hodge, the Granada account director overseeing World Cup sponsorship, confirmed that talks had broken down and no replacement deal was imminent. "They had a period of time in which they could negotiate with us, but they decided not to, for a variety of reasons," he said.

Mr Hodge said it had taken the network some time to reach agreement with the BBC – with whom it jointly paid £160m for the rights to both the 2002 and 2006 World Cups – over which broadcaster should screen which England matches.

The corporation was determined to secure the first-round clash between Sven-Goran Eriksson's England team and Argentina. ITV conceded it was in its own interests to show the country's opener against Sweden, which falls on a Sunday. Mr Hodge added that "a number of people" had expressed interest in sponsoring ITV's coverage since bids were invited from the open market. He maintained it was "not unusual" to still be negotiating "at this stage".

However, by this time four years ago, ITV's World Cup sponsor, General Motors, had been in place for more than a month. ITV now has only a handful of realistic options available if it hopes to make anything like the £4m it is seeking from sponsorship.

The package it is offering publicly includes live televised matches and highlights, webcasts and interactive coverage, but it is likely any final deal will now be more complex.

One option is the sale of sponsorship rights for matches taking place in the morning for £750,000-£800,000; and that of afternoon and evening fixtures for £2m. The network is believed to have privately discounted its overall asking price to £3m.

Tim Brady, managing director of the Zenith Alliance, the media agency, said none of his corporate clients had expressed "any interest" in the ITV rights. "We've put the sponsorship opportunity to our clients, but my email in-box remains empty," he said. "The problem ITV faces is that, as each day goes by, it's going to be harder to get anything like what they want. The people who buy these things are like hungry lions."

* Football chiefs are poised to sell Nationwide League TV rights to the highest bidder in a desperate attempt to find a way out of the collapse of a £315m deal with ITV Digital. The FA, the Premiership and others are understood to be terrified that the financial crisis in football can only worsen if an alternative is not found soon. Uncertainty over the deal has cast fresh doubts over the Wembley national stadium project.

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