Remember Gordon Brown’s football deal for Murdoch?
As David Cameron flies back early from his Africa trip, and the Murdochs are put on parliamentary trial, we are hearing a lot from the Opposition about the close links between Conservatives and the News Corp empire. If Labour party figures really are serious about reining in the power of Rupert Murdoch, they would do well to reflect on one story, with lessons for today’s pickle.
It is 2005. Neelie Kroes, the indefatigable European Competition Commissioner is close to doing something no British government would have dared to: breaking Sky’s monopoly on TV rights for Premier League football. The EC’s proposal would have created two equally sized packages of football rights, to create genuine competition in the market for screening Premier League.
BSkyB were understandably lobbying furiously against this. Mr Murdoch’s gamble on satellite TV had worked largely because of the impact of exclusive live football. Mr Murdoch had a key role in creating the Premier League. The costs of the bid became largely underpinned by huge charges to pubs. Live football was at the very heart of what turned BSkyB into the billion pound profit minting machine it will become this month.
Ofcom even conducted polling, released under Freedom of Information, that showed 37% of fans supported the idea of an equal split. The negotiations were fraught. Waiting in the wings were a then well-funded cable operator, NTL, the company that was to become Virgin Media. They were very keen to get into football, but only if the rights package allowed it to become a genuine competitor.
At the last minute, the European Commission spectacularly watered down its proposals. Gordon Brown at the time had, unusually, reportedly made an intervention with Neelie Kroes the Commissioner.
Yes, the same Gordon Brown who expressed his fury at Mr Murdoch in Parliament last week. We do not know what was said at that meeting.
NTL abandoned its bid. Sky’s monopoly turned into a near-monopoly.*
Why do I bring this up now? It strikes me that it is very very easy when you have lost power or have no power to say you will hold to account powerful interests. The reality is that Gordon Brown had the ultimate opportunity to rein in the Murdoch empire, merely by not intervening in the EC competition process (and remember the independence of competion authorities was a prized part of the Brown philosophy). Alex Brummer, the respected Mail City Editor, pointed out at the time that: “Brown also recognises that if and when he makes it to Number 10, Rupert Murdoch will need to be an ally – given his British print and satellite interests.”
Mr Brown might dispute the account of events from Brussels. A full list of his meetings with News Corp/ International in mid-late ’06, and minutes of the meeting with Ms Kroes would greatly aid transparency and our understanding of the Murdoch media-politics power nexus.
* Around the same time another relevant story: In 2006 NTL, under Richard Branson, thought of another strategy to challenge Sky – buying ITV. James Murdoch nipped in and bought a blocking stake. I was with Mr Branson in Manchester when ITV rejected the bid. He told me in that 2006 interview that “Murdoch has gone one step too far – he went many steps too far a long time ago. He has a dominant control over the British media that’s not good for Britain. It’s not good that one person can effectively dictate who is going to be the next Prime Minister and I would hope that the Competition authorities would look at this transaction and force him to sell his shares and look at the Murdoch empire generally and whether it is good for democracy to have someone so powerful”.