BBC ‘absolutely committed’ to agreeing FIFA broadcast deal for Women’s World Cup

The BBC remains “absolutely committed” to agreeing a deal with FIFA to broadcast the Women’s World Cup, the corporation’s chief content officer has told a parliamentary select committee.

With five weeks to go before the start of the tournament in Australia and New Zealand there is yet to be an agreement put in place between the governing body and any broadcaster for live coverage in the UK.

That has created the risk that matches involving England, bidding to follow last summer’s Euro 2022 success by being crowned world champions for the first time, may not be available to domestic viewers.

The tournament is one of the events that the government stipulates must be made available free to air, but FIFA has accused broadcasters in the bigger European markets of undervaluing live rights and failing to make acceptable bids, leading to the current impasse.

The most recent joint bid by the UK broadcasters is believed to be around £7.7million, roughly eight per cent of the fee paid for the men’s 2022 World Cup when that deal was agreed eight years ago.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino in May called bids made by European broadcasters “a slap in the face of all the great FIFA Women’s World Cup players and indeed of all women worldwide,” and went as far as threatening a blackout in the ‘big five’ European countries.

Addressing the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday, the BBC’s chief content officer Charlotte Moore reiterated the corporation’s determination to reach an agreement, but warned it would not be pressured by FIFA into overpaying.

“We really look at fair value for everything that we do, and the BBC has a strong track record in paying absolutely the right price for things,” said Moore.

“As I say, we’re market-assessing and audience-assessing and looking at the variants for each bid that we put in, and that’s our promise to the audience and to licence fee payers.

“I think we would all share the intention to get these things nailed down because for productions it’s incredibly important, so I think it’s in everybody’s interests to sort these things out.

“But I can’t comment on commercial negotiations that would obviously affect those decisions. We’re absolutely committed.

“We are doing everything we can to make sure that we obtain the rights for as much of women’s sport as we can within the budget and the funding envelope that we have, and we make those decisions across the year.

“We go into negotiations at the right time when those bids come up and we have to go through a system. But we don’t always dictate the speed of that financial situation.”

Sarina Wiegman’s England side begin their campaign against first-time qualifiers Haiti in Brisbane on July 22, with the 2023 edition seeing an expansion to 32 teams for the first time.

That means there will be the same number of games played, 64, as at the men’s World Cup, adding to  the frustration at FIFA at how low international bidding had been in comparison.

The figure offered by Italian broadcasters was reportedly just £283,000 next to the £137m that was paid for live rights to the Qatar World Cup.

The time difference means that matches will take place outside what are considered prime viewing hours in Europe, which Moore hinted had been factored into the BBC’s position during negotiations.

“Obviously I can’t discuss commercial negotiations like that in detail, but safe to say that we are big supporters of women’s sport and of course we are always trying to have properly competitive bids to make sure that we can cover as much sport as our budgets will allow,” she added.

“It’s really important that we continue to have those negotiations in the right way, but of course we want to do everything we can, thinking about value for money for our audiences and whether tournaments are live in-peak or whether they’re through the middle of the night and where they’re placed.

“We take a huge amount of care and detail about how we make sure we don’t over-inflate the market but we really help the market grow, so we’re looking at that.”