Premier League say, ‘Shut Up’
By Nick Raynor
December 12 2004
Premier League bosses have told club chairman’s to stop damaging the league by speaking out about key issues.
The Premier League
chairman, Dave Richards and the chief executive, Richard Scudmore have wrote to
all 20 chairman in the Premiership telling them to put a stop to what they call
‘friendly fire’.
Richards and Scudmore have warned that the action of these
chairmen is damaging the league and could affect the value of their next
broadcasting deal.
The letter does not name any of the culprits but was sent
out after Freddy Shepherds comments on how the top flight will run the English
leagues soon.
Other chairmen guilty of this are
The 2 leaders of the Premier League wrote:
'We all have pretty thick skins in this business, but we have now been
subjected to numerous rounds of "friendly fire" from within the
ranks.’
‘The purpose for writing is to remind you of our agreed
"position" on a number of topics and to ask you all to be conscious
of the sensitivities that exist.’
They went on to mention TV Values:
‘It does not serve our purpose
to make any reference to the future of TV values.
‘If we talk them up, the
European Commission gets animated, we set unrealistic goals. If we talk them
down, broadcasters and the Commission believe you are expecting and are
therefore prepared to receive less income and the media sets us up for a fall.’
'This is a classic no-win
situation, so it would be best that we say absolutely nothing - other than the
market will decide in two years' time.'
The bosses also admitted that
the rise of amount of games having lunch and tea-time kick-off’s so they can be
aired on TV do not help the game:
'It was at the European
Commission's insistence that we have had to show more matches. Ourselves and
Sky would have preferred to limit live coverage to 106 matches.'
They
also commented that they had no desire to take over the FA.