OWING perhaps to a growing sense that the acrimony between the SPFL and Rangers over the cinch dispute was bubbling up to boiling point a few weeks ago, it was perhaps no surprise that the league body chose to hold their AGM over Zoom yesterday rather than in person.
On the surface though, at least, a peace has now broken out between those warring factions after the SPFL finally issued an apology, a six-figure sum by way of compensation to the Ibrox club for any damage to their own reputation and that of Park’s Motor Group, and promised an independent governance review of their organisation.
In-keeping with this new era of collegiate cooperation, Rangers CEO James Bisgrove was indeed elected to the SPFL board during the meeting, despite warnings from the league body that the legal action the club were threatening to pursue against them a few weeks back would jeopardise what should have been a fait accompli.
Bisgrove was slated to replace Celtic counterpart Michael Nicholson after all on the basis that the Old Firm rivals have long adopted a policy of rotating a seat on the board between them, and ultimately the threat of Bisgrove’s ascension being voted down by the other clubs proved to be a hollow one.
Joining Bisgrove, SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster, chairman Murdoch MacLennan and independent non-executive director Karyn McCluskey will be Malcolm McPherson of Hibernian, James MacDonald of Ross County, Paul Hetherington of Airdrieonians, Ayr United’s Graeme Mathie and Forfar Athletic’s Alastair Donald.
Among other points of business were two recommendations that were unanimously voted through by the clubs. The first of which was ‘a recommendation from the club licensing and membership criteria advisory group chaired by Iain McMenemy of Stenhousemuir that all SPFL clubs be required to have a bronze licence in terms of Scottish FA club licensing’, and the other being ‘a recommendation from the competitions working group chaired by Steven Gunn of Aberdeen that cinch Premiership clubs be required to operate a multi-ball system in league matches and all other clubs be required to notify their preferred system to the SPFL in advance of the season starting’.
Both laudable enough goals, but in-keeping with the sort of dry minutiae that is more associated with AGMs than the fireworks that may have been expected had Bisgrove’s place on the board indeed been vetoed.
There was further news from the SPFL yesterday as they announced that they had extended the broadcast deals with the BBC and Infront, its international TV rights agency, until the summer of 2029.
These rights were – according to the SPFL press release – subject to ‘extensive tender processes, which attracted multiple bids for the SPFL’s rights’. As tender processes tend to do, funnily enough, begging the question as to why the deal with Sky Sports wasn’t offered out to market in anything more than an informal fashion.
The same release stated that ‘both the BBC and Infront contracts will see a considerable increase in the values paid for SPFL rights’, though exact details of the figures involved were notable by their absence.
Previously, the Beeb had been paying £2.8m a season to show highlights on Sportscene, 20 live Friday night matches from The Championship, their radio rights and to allow them to offer clips on their website.
Trying to gauge how much the Infront deal may be worth is a trickier conundrum altogether. According to an article by respected broadcasting rights expert Martin Ross of Sport Business, the initial contract for non-EU rights with MP & Silva way back in 2013 was thought to be worth in the region of £2m per year, with the company later acquiring European rights (outside the UK and Ireland) from Sky. When Infront took over as international rights distributor in 2018, however, it was on a commission-based agreement.
The SPFL statement yesterday spoke of matches in Scotland now being shown in over 150 countries worldwide and new deals recently signed with emerging markets such as Japan and South Korea, but a request put to the league body by Herald Sport for the specific figures involved in the new deals with Infront and the BBC wasn’t answered at the time of going to print.
