The announcement that RTE and BBC coverage of the Olympic Games is now assured until the year 2008, after a £900 million agreement between the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will come as a welcome relief for sports fans. The agreement means that the Sydney Games in 2000, and all succeeding summer and winter games until 2008, will be available to the widest possible number of viewers throughout Europe.
The IOC's decision comes as something of a surprise: a consortium led by Mr Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation had actually submitted a much more lucrative offer. But the IOC, perhaps with an eye to wider marketing and advertising has said that it preferred to keep faith with terrestrial, non subscription television. The armchair sports fan will no doubt endorse the view of one BBC executive: who called the agreement "a victory for the ordinary; viewer".
The EBU agreement represents a rare victory for the public service broadcasters. Mr Murdoch has built a global television empire by securing exclusive rights to sporting events. His dominant presence has changed the whole nature of both rugby union and rugby league and has led to the formation of soccer's English Premier League five years ago.
The irony is that Mr Murdoch's success has been achieved with the active encouragement of sports administrators charged with the responsibility for nurturing and promoting their respective games. They have been seduced by Mr Murdoch's deep pockets, but the potential long term damage of denying the average viewer access to quality sports events should not be underestimated. In the increasing battle for the hearts and minds of young people, sport needs the oxygen of the widest possible publicity.
The rare victory for public service broadcasting on the Olympics comes shortly before next week's debate on the Broadcasting Bill in the House of Commons, which will hear demands for new safeguards to curb the influence of subscription channels in television sports coverage. The debate about access to television sports events is also certain to quicken in Ireland. Already the ordinary Irish viewer has been denied access to Ryder Cup golf, live Premier League soccer and a welter of other sports events. There is already speculation that BSkyB is also targeting Ireland's international soccer fixtures and even the All Ireland football and hurling championships.
The case for some kind of control perhaps a British style move to "list" special sports events as events of national importance is persuasive. As one EBU official acknowledged in Lausanne this week, sports coverage must remain an important component of public service broadcasting. It should not be the exclusive preserve of Mr Murdoch's global television empire.