Virgin Media: 'Customers will bear costs of Premier League TV deal'

Virgin Media doesn't own the rights to any Premier League football matches and didn't bid in Tuesday's auction.

But it does have skin in the games - many of its 3.7m television customers pay to watch BT Sport or Sky Sports on Virgin platform.

Virgin Media complained about the rising price of football rights to Ofcom, the regulator, last September.

Speaking for the first time since making that complaint, the company's chief executive, Tom Mockridge, told ITV News that British fans already pay the highest prices in Europe to watch live football as from 2016 prices will rise further and a result of the auction on Tuesday, an auction he believes wasn't fair.

Tom Mockridge said "The Premier League says 'we are going to write our own rules' they create a monopoly, they sell a monopoly and they get a monopoly price for it - over £5bn more than a 70% increase. The money only comes from one place in the end which is the consumer that wants to watch a football game and is required to pay what is increasingly big sums to do it.

Now note: BT and Sky had no problem with the way the auction structured. They bid and with some gusto.

The Premier League dismisses Virgin's complaint as "self-serving" nonsense. £5 billion is a staggering sum of money but that is exactly what the rights are worth.

But note too that Ofcom is investigating. The regulator is still gathering evidence from broadcasters, clubs, and fans.

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Virgin Media supports collective selling (rather than clubs striking individual deals) but points at arrangements in Italy, Spain, France and want something similar. The cable TV operator wants Ofcom to consider forcing more matches to be broadcast live (at the moment only 41% are, rising to 44% from 2016) and for games to be broadcast simultaneously on both Sky and BT. At the moment, fans who want to see all the live games have no choice but to buy both Sky and BT. Virgin Media say that if both networks showed all the games, there would then be real competition, and prices would fall.

Virgin Media also questions the effectiveness of the Saturday afternoon "blackout". It has existed since the 1960s to protect attendances at lower-league football games. Virgin says there's no obvious proof it does anything other than restrict the number of games available for broadcast.

Ofcom will reveal its thinking at the end of March. If it agrees that there is competition problem - that viewers are paying more than they should to watch live football - then it has the power to un-stitch the deal that was done.

More: Premier League clubs 'can reduce ticket prices by £40'