The Competition Council messes up the plans of the Romanian Professional Football League (LPF)

The sale of the TV broadcasting rights for the football games of the !st League would be a real lifeline for most of the clubs in the first division. The intervention of the Competition Council, as well as the lack of interest of the domestic TV stations, may muddle the plans of the Professional Football League, which was hoping to make at least 120 million Euros from selling the broadcasting rights for three years. The meeting between the representatives of the TV stations, the president of the professional football league, Dumitru Dragomir and the members of the Competition Council did not bring many clarifications concerning the auction and the packages put up for sale. There is a risk that, in case the Competition Council does not speed up the process of finding a solution to this issue, the auction for the sale of the rights may not take place this spring, which would mean that the first stages of the next season would not be televised, leading to losses of several millions of Euros.

The president of the Competition Council, Bogdan Chiriţoiu assured Dumitru Dragomir that the institution he is leading will try to make a decision as soon as possible: "Our concern over football is that there if there is just one buyer, it will become too strong in the mass media market. That is why we wish to change this system, we want to get to a commitment, we have the opportunity to launch a new system, that would allow for more actions to be taken, not just issuing a fine, but actually changing things. It is the first time when we try to use a new tool as part of the investigation that we began, the commitment. This commitment would be signed by all the parties involved, with the parties to offer more efficient solutions than the ones resulting from the completion of the investigation. Tomorrow (ed. note: today) we need to give an answer to the Professional League on whether we accept this call for bids or not".

Very angry, the president of the Professional Football League attacked the Competition Council in several statements, but he eventually admitted that he would do everything in his power for a solution beneficial to all the parties to be found: "I was surprised to see the Competition Council get involved in all this, but since in this country huge abuses of power are allowed to take place quite often, especially when I saw the Competition Council issue fines as big as 35 million Euros, and then those that received the fines forced to go through trials that lasted for years to prove they were right, I realized that I needed to talk to them. We pay their wages, and nobody pays ours, so there is no need for us to bow to their every whim. At first I thought they were in cahoots with the TV stations, in fact I still do, and that they want to give us trouble. Our teams rather heavily depend on TV royalties, because the major businesspeople are kind of short on money to spend on football". Dragomir also said that the League hired several attorneys that would study the European regulations on the subject: "I"ve found that we may be in compliance with the norms of the European Union. We made those packages, one was specifically designed for the Romanian Television. There will nine packages: seven identical packages, a package for TVR and one for a TV network that has a coverage of at least 70%. We did not have time to hold auctions for the 8th and 9th packages, but I checked and we should have. I don"t want to come into conflict with the Competition Council or with any TV network. I want to show the people of the Competition Council that what they"re demanding of us does not exist in Europe".

With the exception of the representatives of RCS-RDS and of those of Romtelecom, the other participants in the meeting did not express too much interest in the technical details for the auction, or, as the official of a sports TV network said in a low voice: "Given the starting price for a package, I don"t see what could possibly interest us".