It’s a beautiful game

The UK's Prisma Sports and Media, part of German media mogul Leo Kirch's business empire, has accused the BBC and ITV as acting as a cartel in negotiating for broadcast rights to the 2002 World Cup.

Prisma has written to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) asking it to look into the bidding arrangements by the two UK terrestrials for football's most high-profile event.

The two channels have refused to negotiate separately, which could put them in breach of either the Fair Trading Act or the recently introduced Competition Act.

If the OFT decides to uphold the Kirch subsidiary's complaint, both broadcasters, which have shared rights to the event since 1966, could be fined up to 10% of their annual turnover. It would also spark a bidding war.

Under the Broadcasting Act 1996, all 64 matches of the quadrennial tournament can only be shown live on free-to-air television.

The Kirch Group, which stumped up $1.2billion for the television rights to the World Cup in 2002 and 2006, wants $243million for the UK rights to next year's event alone.

This is more than 30 times more than the BBC and ITV paid for the 1998 tournament when the rights were held by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).