Solicitor scores football deal after marathon talks

Face-to-face negotiations and idea-sharing averted the prospect of the 2002 football World Cup in Japan and South Korea not being screened on terrestrial television, according to the solicitor who led ITV's bid for the rights to the tournament.ITV's chief negotiator, Simon Johnson, told the Gazette that after more than three years of long-distance negotiations, as soon as representatives from ITV and BBC sat down in the same room as their counterparts from Kirch Media - the broadcasting conglomerate holding the rights to the World Cup - a deal was struck.'This was a tough, drawn-out deal, but it just goes to show that there is no substitute for face-to-face negotiations,' he said.The deal to show all 64 matches from the tournament on BBC and ITV - as well as all the games from the 2006 World Cup in Germany - was clinched last week for a reported sum of between 140 million and 160 million.

Kirch had been demanding 175 million from the UK for just the 2002 tournament - far in excess of the 55 million offered by ITV and the BBC.'There was a genuine fear that if a deal had not been struck, the games would not have been freely available to viewers in the UK,' said Mr Johnson.

'I have never been involved in negotiations that have lasted such a long time - there was a lot of posturing and periods of no contact.'Andrew Towler