Consultants to advise Ryan whether rugby should be free to view

A DECISION about whether the Six Nations and Heineken Cup rugby matches should be available on free-to-view TV will be made by the autumn, Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan has told the Dáil.

A consultation process on the controversy has been extended until July 4th. The Minister said he hoped to have an e-tender document out by the end of this week to “appoint consultants who will take regard of the submissions that are brought in”, because “these are complex issues” and “you want to get outside advice”.

He will bring in the consultants “towards the end of that consultation process” and then “very quickly turn around a report and presentation which I will bring back to Government and bring to Europe”.

During Dáil questions Mr Ryan said the fundamental question was “do we want the Irish team to be free-to-air or not?”

He rejected claims by Labour communications spokeswoman Liz McManus that he had “blithely” said the IRFU would be able to make up the shortfall.

The IRFU’s income is down €560,000 because of reduced advertising revenue.

Mr Ryan insisted: “I would never blithely say anything about IRFU finance.” He said the fundamental question was whether the financial success of a sport was in the long run dependent on having a fan base or having a broadcasting contract.

“I believe that if you don’t have a support base, if you lose 80 per cent of the audience which is what you do when you move away from a free-to-air service,” holding on “to your audience is crucial to future revenue”.

Fine Gael communications spokesman Simon Coveney said Ireland “gets most of its revenue from advertising in Britain and France. That’s the way in which the deal works for Ireland at the moment. We get a totally disproportionate amount of broadcasting rights money because of the way Six Nations and Heineken cup rugby is negotiated collectively and then the revenue is split six ways.

Mr Ryan however said: “The Six Nations accounts for €10 million of some €14 million that the IRFU gets from broadcasting rights.

“A lot of that would accrue from English or other markets where we get back more than people might actually pay for the rights in Ireland.

“Nothing in what I’m doing or suggesting would interfere in any with rights in the UK or any other country, or would interfere with the rights of Sky, Setanta or any other pay-per-view TV. It’s merely saying that we would make it available as well on a free-to-air basis.”

He added that he had “no intention of distorting anything that goes on in the UK or France”. All “we’re concerned about is the Irish public’s viewing rights and not in any way favouring one broadcaster over another because I don’t have any intention of not having it available on pay TV, which I think does an excellent job.”

Ms McManus asked if he was prepared to guarantee the shortfall since “you’re confident it can be made up in other ways”. “There is no intention to create a shortfall,” he replied. The rights for the Six Nations “is guaranteed for the next six years, so no matter what we do I don’t see any change in the vast majority of broadcasting funding in the next three years.”