Football & Television: A Marriage of Convenience?

A seminar as part of the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre Public Seminar Series

Given by: Alex Fynn

The Black Suite
The British Medical Association (BMA) House
Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9JP

Monday 19th October 2015 at 6pm

For directions click here.

Attendance at the event is free but you need to register.

Synopsis

In this presentation Alex Fynn will chart the often uneasy relationship between English and European football on the one hand, and the television broadcasting industry on the other. From an auspicious start in 1953 with the televising of the “Stanley Matthews” FA Cup Final the relationship then cooled with virtually no live club-competition football in England until the 1980s. Alex will explain the distrust of the traditional football administrator for this powerful new media and its potential impact on the game, with the two sides only coming together with the advent of the first Premier League/Sky broadcasting deal at the beginning of the 1992/1993 season. He will go on to show how Sky (and CanalPlus) changed the way that football was financed, presented and even played, so that today the rights fees for the major European competitions change hands for billions of pounds. It is a story of incompetence, self-serving opportunism, as well as great entertainment.

Biography

Alex Fynn is a well-known consultant to the sports’ industry who has also written extensively on the subject of the football business. His clients have included Arsenal, Celtic, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur football teams, as well as the Football League and the Football Association. Through his work he has been influential in the formation of both the English Premier League and the UEFA European Champions League. Previously Alex was a director of the well-known advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, latterly as vice-chairman. He was responsible for a number of major clients including Procter & Gamble. Throughout his career Alex has acted as an advisor on the negotiation of the sale of TV broadcasting rights for a number of clubs and federations including the FA, the Football League, the RFU and the British Athletics Federation.