The complaint from TalkSport’s owners The Wireless Group, follows the BBC’s purchase of radio broadcast rights to English Premier League soccer matches for almost £45million ($64m) for the next three years. TalkSport offered to pay just £27m ($38m) for the rights.
“Commercially successful executives are now running BBC Radio and exulting in their power and finance to disadvantage their commercial competitors,” the document said.
Kelvin MacKenzie said: “We must never again allow a situation to develop where a tax-funded public service organisation falls into the hands of a management whose preoccupation is to trample the advertising-funded competition to the detriment of taxpayers, listeners, advertisers and commerce.”
The BBC told sportbusiness that it would not comment on the news until it has been notified by the OFT.
This is not the first time TalkSport and the BBC have been at loggerheads. After the Euro 2000 soccer championships, the BBC took TalkSport to the High Court for commenting on matches from a hotel room in Amsterdam and describing the reports as ‘live’.
The High Court subsequently said TalkSport’s coverage was not illegal because it was ‘off- tube’ reporting, which means it was reported from television coverage rather than from live matches.
And last month, sportbusiness.com reported that Kelvin McKenzie, filed another complaint against the BBC with the OFT over the radio rights to the England versus Greece World Cup qualifier.
TalkSport, the UK radio station run by former editor of The Sun newspaper Kelvin McKenzie, has filed a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) saying the BBC allegedly abused its dominant position by overpaying for the rights to broadcast sports events on radio.
