The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has called on the Football Association to reconsider its decision to sell FA Cup broadcast rights via a third party to a gambling website.
Since the start of last season, bookmaker Bet365 has had rights to show FA Cup ties on its website and app in a deal agreed in January 2017, six months before the FA announced it was cutting its ties with gambling firms.
Gambling addiction is a far hotter topic nowadays than when he FA agreed a media rights deal with IMG in early 2017, part of which permits them to sell the right to show live footage or clips of FA Cup matches to bookmakers. Bet365 were allowed to show live coverage of twenty-three third-round matches last weekend.
The bookmakers argue that no-one was obliged to have a bet on any of the matches to enjoy coverage of the ties but they did have to have a funded Bet365 account or to have placed a bet on any event with Bet365 in the previous 24 hours. Many of the ties featured teams that normally don’t receive mainstream TV coverage you can appreciate the temptation by some fans to have a bet simply to watch their team in action. Whether or not that is enticement is debatable but it doesn’t really cast Bet365 in a great light, not the FA who should probably have known better than to sell off its rights to certain bidders.
Bet365 already make provision for gamblers are able to watch tennis, basketball, snooker, darts, cricket and squash live through its streaming service but, with William Hill launching Betting TV to accommodate free-to-air horse and greyhound racing, the spotlight is on bookmakers to ensure they have the correct protocols in place to ensure they protect the public.
