Sunderland AFC and West Ham United have been forced withdraw a selection of their on-line services due to restrictions imposed by the Football League.
Following 11th-hour negotiations with the League in a bid to continue the service, both clubs have been told they are no longer permitted to broadcast live match commentary or show visual highlights of league games for the rest of the season.
Clubs in the Nationwide League do not own the audio/visual rights for their matches and are not authorised to transmit any of this footage without the consent of the Football League. Sunderland and West Ham have, therefore, been forced to withdraw this service.
In December 2000, the Football League sold its audio/visual rights to Premium TV and later set up a joint venture company called FLPTV. As part of this sale package, clubs in the Football League at that time received a payment for the sale of their audio/visual rights.
As Sunderland and West Ham United were not then in the Football League, they were not party to the original sale package and as a result did not receive any payment.
After several months of negotiations, FLPTV has now demanded that Sunderland and West Ham each pay a substantial sum (80 per cent of which is taken by the Football League) for the right to transmit match footage and continue to provide free commentary on their own websites – or break their existing contracts with Sky to launch a PTV ‘World Service’ until the end of the season.
Sunderland and West Ham currently have media partnerships with Sky to operate their official websites and online audio/visual services, which preclude them from offering a PTV ‘World Service’ package.
Lesley Callaghan, SAFC Communications Director, said: “While both clubs feel very strongly that loyal supporters will be inconvenienced and denied valuable access to match highlights and commentary, in the current financial climate it is impossible to consider such a payment to FLPTV.
“On match days several thousand fans normally listen to our free match commentary and they will no longer be able to do this. This will be particularly hard for many supporters who live outside the region and we are very disappointed that they will lose out.
“We will try to offer an enhanced text-based service on match days and will continue to provide free access to daily news videos and Premiership archives on safc.com.
“We would like to apologise to supporters for this inconvenience and would like to re-iterate that this is something we have been forced to do against our wishes.”
The clubs will continue to offer selected services in the video lounge: including daily news and a video archive, with footage from games in the Premiership. They will also compensate existing subscribers by offering a free subscription to Sky Scape – a news, sports and entertainment video package or pro rata refund.
Sunderland will still be permitted to show footage and provide live match commentary of their FA Cup games, so the service will be available for this weekend’s fourth round tie at Ipswich Town.