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The European Union's decision to force the split of TV rights of the Premiership matches will ultimately prove beneficial to the lower echelons of English football.
The EU decided that the Premiership had to split the rights, with no one broadcaster carrying more than four of the six packages available for auction from the deal struck between the Premiership and the EU.
While the deal will ultimately mean the loss of revenue from the top flight, and a likely reduction of revenue from the FA Cup in the earlier rounds, eventually the spread of televised football will lead to the expansion of television exposure for the lower leagues.
BSkyB, holding the current monopoly, have already indicated that they will bid less - per game - for their allowed number of packages than their last £1.024bn all encompassing deal that runs til 2007.
For other TV channels it provides the opportunity to take games that were otherwise beyond their budget. For BSkyB, with several channels to fill, it will leave a void of football coverage that their entire business has been based on for many years.
BSkyB became the be-all and end-all of football coverage in pubs and clubs thanks to their universal coverage, and were able to charge several hundreds of pounds per month for blanket coverage of the Premiership to every Pub and Club in the UK and Ireland. The loss of the ultimate carrot to the average landlord will mean that other providers, likely to include the recently formed NTL/Telewest Cable giant and ITV - utilising the Pay-Per-View option on the Freeview service, will be able to gain a foothold on the most valuable of subscribers - the Public Houses.
BSkyB are likely to retain some form of financial interest in the PPV operations of the other major bidders since they retain the only blanket Pay-TV broadcast coverage of the country, meaning that other providers may have to pay BSkyB to carry the matches they couldn't buy outright. NTL/Telewest carry their services to less than 5m homes, and Freeview's PPV capability is carried to half that thanks to nearly half the current Freeview compatible boxes installed in homes not having the requisite card slot to take the PPV option.
However the bigger picture, for the lower leagues, is what will BSkyB do with the empty airtime it has left after the loss of at least 40 matches per season? It has extended it's sports coverage over the last decade on the basis of it's Premiership dominance, extending one channel to four dedicated channels plus a rolling sports news channel - plus a six-figure investment into a Racing-dedicated channel after the initial backers went bust. BSkyB have made a point to cover any sport that was worthy of coverage, and the loss of football coverage can only be replaced by coverage of more football with every other marketable sport facing saturation coverage.
The token deal to cover Conference games, paying the two Clubs less than the cost of the Satellite airtime used to broadcast the tie live, filled a gap on International weekends. It may now be used to fill more blank Mondays and Sunday lunchtimes and, with sides like Accrington, Gravesend, and Forest Green experimenting with Friday nights, BSkyB may find a division of clubs happy to switch games for easy revenue. Leagues One and Two will also find themselves being sought for coverage as BSkyB looks to fill gaps rather than close channels and make their product look less competitive.
Of course, BSkyB's monopoly does not end until the Summer of 2007. After that, it will be an interesting time in English football.
