The recommendations on the “Crown Jewels” of British sport will be published today following an inquiry headed by David Davies, the former executive director of the Football Association in England.
The list safeguards major sporting events for terrestrial broadcasters and Mr Davies’s inquiry is expected to propose it now include international football qualifiers.
But Mr Smith said: “If the revenue stream is not there then it’s going to have a disastrous effect on the game. That’s why we’ve gone with satellite. It’s nothing to do with depriving supporters from seeing football.”
Mr Smith fears the move will dramatically reduce the SFA’s investment in the grassroots game. “It seems like a great idea to say your games should be free-to-air,” he said. “It sounds like you’re really considering the public but it would have serious financial repercussions in terms of income that we bring in.
“The biggest part of it is the development of the game. We work along with Government and they realise that the more kids we have involved in football, playing the game, the better it will be for football, for health and fitness levels.
“It would have a massive impact. We know from the negotiations we’ve had recently that terrestrial stations can’t compete with satellite stations in terms of the funding.”
The SFA’s current four-year rights deal with Sky is worth about £60 million and includes live Scottish Cup matches in addition to Scotland’s European Championship and World Cup qualifiers.
Mr Smith said: “We would have no problem at all provided the free-to-air broadcaster paid the same money as a satellite broadcaster.
“Or maybe the Government would make up the shortfall in terms of the deal that we get, in order that we can continue to offer the services we offer at grassroots, youth and professional levels.
“However, the money would not be available to us, so it would affect the budget greatly and we would do a lot less in the game in Scotland.
“It would affect football going forward in terms of the amount of people who can enjoy the game and play it – and the amount of players we would be developing for the professional game.”
The review is likely to recommend that the England cricket team’s home Ashes Tests should be screened on free-to-air television, along with World Cup and European Championship qualifiers involving home nations, plus the Wimbledon tennis championship and golf’s Open Championship.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article