Tartan Army Fury After STV Snubs World Cup

Dec 2 2007 By Charles Lavery

But England's World Cup Games Will Be Live

SCOTLAND fans will be forced to watch England's World Cup qualifiers on STV - because they did not bother to bid for the rights to our games.

English World Cup qualifiers will be shown across Britain while the Tartan Army face a terrestrial telly blackout.

ITV paid a whopping s425million to show England's home games.

But their Scottish counterparts did not even try to win the right to show Scotland's group matches against rivals such as Holland and Norway.

Instead, the contract - available at a fraction of the cost of England's - went to Irish satellite broadcasters Setanta.

The SFA sold the rights to our 2010 World Cup qualifying matches in a s33million TV deal which left them with no control over who screens them.

They employed agency IMG to sell their matches five years ago.

IMG have since made massive profits selling on the rights to the highest bidders.

In previous years, STV - backed by ITV - have been able to win the right to show our crucial qualifying games away from home live.

But a spokeswoman for STV claimed they "weren't invited" to bid this time around.

She said: "We were not invited to bid for the rights to the World Cup qualifying matches. If we had, we would have considered it.

"Football is important to us but we can't bid for every event and we have to be selective in how we invest in programming at this time. The SFA and IMG have to make a commercial decision and will naturally choose the highest bidder."

The BBC did bid for the games but their offer was rejected by IMG.

The overall effect of the debacle is that STV will have England home games on offer, with no live Scotland action on terrestial TV.

Sky already have the rights to show the Scotland home matches.

A Setanta spokesman refused to reveal how much they had paid but the firm raised a s90million "war chest" to bid for the matches and beat Sky and the BBC.

But Michael O'Rourke, Setanta's joint chief executive, said: "This is another massive addition to Setanta's increasingly strong portfolio of premium football."

SFA chief executive Gordon Smith defended the deal, which was struck before he took up his post.

He said: "My job is to get the best deal I can for the Scottish Football Association. Unfortunately, it is not my job to make sure every Scotland fan sees the game.

"We decided to do a deal that gave us - and Scottish football - a guaranteed cash injection."

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