Advisor to the Veres president Serhiy Koval, who attended the meeting of the UPL general meeting yesterday, expressed the club's position on the formation of a single TV pool for the upcoming season.
Sergey Koval- From the very beginning of the discussion of the concept of a single TV pool, our club has been in favour of this idea. In particular, Veres president Ivan Nadein has repeatedly publicly stated that Veres is in favour of a single TV pool.
At today's meeting, we, as a club, expected to see a clear picture of the broadcasts with figures, calculations, production costs, sources of monetisation, etc. The result was that there were no constructive and concrete developments. The business model of a single TV pool is not clear. It is unclear how the clubs plan to make money by selling TV rights. This is one of the main sources of revenue for clubs around the world. Moreover, there is no understanding of how to get out of a situation where three clubs: Dnipro-1, Zorya and Dynamo have already clearly stated their position that under any circumstances they will remain with the 1+1 TV channel group, where they have existing contracts.
We were presented with a project according to which the clubs form a budget on their own, which is then used to pay for the production of broadcasts. But no one can explain how to cover these costs and make a profit. It's the same story with the timeframe: "okay, the first year you invest so much, in a year or two you are guaranteed to get so much back" - this is not the case. We are told: "maybe we'll sell it to someone, maybe in a year, maybe in two years". In other words, in fact, clubs are offered to pay for the production of broadcasts at their own expense - they want to take away from us:
a) proceeds from the sale of betting rights, which are distributed among all UPL clubs;
b) revenues from the UPL's general partner VBET, which should also be distributed among all participants;
c) revenues from international organisations, the purpose of which is specifically for clubs.
Then put these funds into one pot and send it to production under the guise of a good idea to support a single TV pool. Moreover, we are assured that these revenues are income from the sale of television broadcasting rights, which is, sorry, a bit of strange mathematics. These revenues a priori belong to the club, they are included in our budget. Why does someone decide for our club what to spend these funds on?
There is also no clear accounting, no justification as to why the cost of organising one broadcast costs so much. We also do our own research, talk to people, and come up with a conditional figure of 10, while we are offered to do the same for a conditional figure of 25.
There are a lot of nuances and technical questions that need to be answered by experts. Do we need broadcasts on 10+ cameras? How many UPL stadiums will be able to organise such a broadcast? Do we need a 4k picture if there are empty stands and shabby treadmills in the background? People watch videos on their smartphones, the world is changing. Let's find a balance, make a price-quality ratio, but start from the realities, take off your rose-coloured glasses. Sit down, think about it, suggest it. Is it so difficult?
We are ready to look for consensus, ready to compromise, ready to consider any commercially attractive options for a single TV pool, but they are simply not available at the moment. There is no logic and no business model. With the same success, we can continue to cooperate with the same Setanta under the old scheme or do our own production, broadcast matches on our club channel VeresTV on YouTube, looking for mechanisms and opportunities to compensate for the cost of these broadcasts on our own, without the participation of the UPL and annual mantras about how everything will be fine with a single TV pool," Koval said.
