These days football is big business, but football on television is even bigger business. A quick glance at Liverpool's opening Premier League fixtures illustrates just how important broadcasting the Reds into people's living rooms is, with six of their first eight matches being shown live on either Sky Sports or BT Sport.
Now a multi-billion pound industry, other players such as Amazon have made in-roads into the lucrative market, but 23 years ago predicted growth in the sector was very much on the radar of one small screen player and they had an ambitious plan to execute it.
It was on this day in 1999 that Granada announced that they had bought a 9.9% stake in Liverpool Football Club - the first British television company to do such a deal with a football club. The deal, worth £22million to the Reds, was designed to pave the way for the Merseyside club to launch its own dedicated television channel - LFC TV.
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But Granada's collaboration had another motive. By becoming financially associated with the club, the company wanted to act as Liverpool's agents when it came to negotiating future television rights. Existing rights-holders BSKyB had been blocked in an attempt to buy Manchester United for £600million by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, three months earlier. But Granada, who already had a 30% stake in the Old Trafford club's own television channel MUTV, had eyed the potential to make serious money from both clubs should a restrictive practices court ruling force the then-called Premiership to halt selling television rights for the league as a collective.
If the ruling went in their favour, Granada would be almost certain to be able to win the rights to showing Liverpool's matches themselves, a plan that had been encouraged by a deal Barcelona had done with Spanish cable company Via Digital that netted the Catalan giants £254million over five years.
As reported by The Independent at the time, Steve Morrison, chief executive of Granada Media Group, said: "We're delighted to use our expertise to help build up Liverpool FC's commercial value and to enhance the brand for its supporters."
Matthew Horsman, media analyst at merchant bank Henderson Crosthwaite agreed. He said: "It makes sense for a media and leisure company to be involved in one of the biggest leisure pursuits in the country and one of the most valuable media properties."
The deal would see Granada take control of a number of commercial issues for Liverpool, including publishing, electronic media rights and merchandising. As a minority shareholder, it also ensured that chairman David Moores remained in overall control of the club, with his stake reduced from 58% to 51%.
Mr Moores said: "With the increased capital strength and wealth of commercial expertise the partnership brings, I am confident that together we will develop the Liverpool FC brand into a world leader. Most importantly, the partnership will help bring success on the field which will always be our number one priority."
The £22million that Granada paid had been earmarked solely for team development, with £20million given to manager Gerard Houllier for transfer spend and the remaining £2million allocated to the club's Academy, as they looked to produced the next Robbie Fowler or Michael Owen.
The television company owned 50% of the TV digital subscription platform ONdigital, which had positioned itself as a rival to BSkyB. Granada hoped to use its leverage to wrestle the Premiership's broadcast rights away from Sky when they came up for renewal in 2001, but with a finger in the pie at both Liverpool and Manchester United, was seemingly in an even better position should it be ruled that clubs could sell the rights for their own matches.
However as things turned out, the Manchester-based company did not achieve the wins that it needed in order to break Sky's stranglehold on the English game.
Just weeks after its share acquisition of Liverpool had been rubber stamped, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) suffered the embarrassment of a court ruling that Premiership club's collective and exclusive deal with BSkyB was not illegal and could continue. The OFT had brought the case to court at significant expense and Granada's significant growth masterplan appeared to somewhat hinge on it.
Instead, the court ruled in Sky's favour and the Rupert Murdoch-owned company went on to secure a new £1.1billlion deal for Premier League rights that was eventually agreed to run for three years, fending off EU competition concerns in the process.
In the absence of any top-flight TV rights, ONdigital was failing and 12 months later rebranded as ITV Digital, launching dedicated sports channel ITV Sport. It bought the rights to Nationwide Football League games for £315million and showed their matches instead.
But by March 2002, ITV Digital had collapsed, still owing a whopping £178.5million to the Football League - money that its member clubs had already accounted for. As Sky mopped up the rights for the both the Football League and the League Cup at a steal, Granada's dream of becoming the major player in football broadcasting lay in tatters. They still had their share in Liverpool, but the deal was not the commercial success they hoped it would be. Far from it in fact.
As the Merseyside club continued to lose ground on the sporting and commercial juggernaut that was Manchester United, David Moores' agreement to sell the club to US businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2007 signalled the opportunity for Granada and ITV to exit Liverpool, albeit at a loss.
Having bought their stake in the Reds for £22m, capital growth hopes were given up on as a deal was done to sell the shares onto Hicks and Gillett for £17.4million - an overall loss of £4.6million. But rather than feeling hard done by, ITV bosses appeared relieved just to call time on the deal.
As reported by the Guardian at the time, an ITV spokesman said: "The sale represents a further example of ITV's successful disposal programme of non-core assets which is now approaching £500m since the merger creating ITV plc in 2004."
In hindsight Liverpool supporters would probably have much preferred for the sale of Granada's shares to the American pair never to have take place, as the club ran into grave financial bother best served in a separate article. But if the North West television company privately held regrets about the money lost on their venture with the Reds, it surely pains into significance compared to the 'epic swindle' suffered by the recipients of their stake in the club.
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