The remainder is distributed to regional sporting associations

The remainder is distributed to regional sporting associations.Under the contract, marketing rights to foreign TV companies are held by CSI, a Rome-based marketing and sponsorship agency.Much Premier League football can be viewed live in many countries overseas, whether from BSkyB or BBC broadcasts - unlike in the UK, where only selected games are shown live to keep up ground attendances.A new contract is expected to be signed before the end of the current season, and it will run until 2002.Football insiders predict that it will be worth close to pounds 25m to the Premier League, with around pounds 20m going to the clubs after deductions. Each club that remains in the top flight for the 1998-99 season will receive at least pounds 1m a year for foreign rights to its games, compared with the pounds 270,000 a year each currently receives.It is also believed that the new deal will not necessarily be with CSI. Instead, the Premier League will ask a number of sports marketing agencies to tender for the rights.A spokesman for the Premier League refused to confirm that negotiations were taking place, but he did say: "The interest in Premier League games around the world is phenomenal at the moment. Since we signed the last deal in 1994, the League has gone from being in good shape to being in very good shape. We are now a worldwide product."The new deal will dwarf Carling's four-year sponsorship arrangement, worth pounds 9m a year to the Premier League from next season. It will also further confirm the money-spinning potential of professional football, and its transformation in the 1990s. Nine years ago, in the aftermath of the Heysel and Bradford disasters, the Football League could only get ITV to pay pounds 9m a year for live game rights.

From next season, BSkyB will pay pounds 167.5m a year for similar rights to Premier League games.. Derek Wanless, the group chief executive of National Westminster Bank, has been approached to become chairman of Newcastle United plc ahead of its flotation this spring, writes Richard Halstead. Mr Wanless is a keen Newcastle fan, who has been known to sport football cufflinks in Newcastle colours. He would join three other non-executives on the board, all of whom will be named within the next few weeks. Sir John Hall, currently the club chairman, would remain as chairman of the football club, which would become a subsidiary of the public company. He would also retain a place on the parent company's board but would not be overall chairman.NatWest said, however, that Mr Wanless has turned down the job, at least for now. "For a number of reasons, including Mr Wanless's existing business commitments as well as the fact that NatWest Markets is acting as both sponsor and broker to the Newcastle flotation, it was agreed that it would not be appropriate to accept at this time."But Newcastle sources say that the door remains open to Mr Wanless if he wants to become a director in the future.If he did, he would join two former employees in senior roles at Newcastle.

The day-to-day running of the club is currently in the hands of joint chief executive Mark Corlidge, the former head of NatWest Markets' corporate finance division, while the finance director, Josephine Dixon, worked directly for Mr Wanless as a strategist at NatWest before her appointment to the Newcastle board.. International Cabletel, the only rival to the British Digital Broadcasting consortium of Carlton, BSkyB and the BBC in the race for the 30-channel Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) franchise, is set to launch a challenge to its opponents before the European Commission. Cabletel's lawyers were believed to be preparing the ground this weekend for a formal submission to the Commission's Competition Directorate, headed by commissioner Karel van Miert. The company is expected to cite articles 85 and 86 of the Treaty of Rome, which prohibit restrictive trading agreements and abuses of dominant market positions, in its complaint. Observers believe it would be possible to start proceedings with the European Commission even before the Independent Television Commission (ITC) awards the digital frequencies (known as "multiplexes") for the broadcast of digital terrestrial television, scheduled for some time in the next two or three months.However, a more likely scenario is that Cabletel would file the challenge if and when the Carlton/BSkyB/BBC consortium - which is acknowledged to have by far the stronger bid - is chosen by the ITC.According to legal experts familiar with European competition law, the initial foray by Cabletel would probably argue that the concentration of power within the television industry by having the biggest players in satellite and terrestrial TV would amount to a restrictive cartel.But other industry observers point out that a more promising angle of attack for Cabletel could be the pricing of BSkyB's premium services over the new digital terrestrial frequencies.BSkyB sells its services to cable companies at a discount, but it insists that the cable companies take its "basic" package in order to benefit from Sky's premium services. Yet when BSkyB sells its premium channels into the DTT multiplex, there may be no room in the 30-channel capacity for the basic Sky services.Observers believe that any attempt by BSkyB to sell the premium services to British Digital Broadcasting without charging for basic services could be ruled unlawful by the European Commission..

The property industry is watching closely to see whether Barclays Bank can finally rid itself of an unwanted child, the property company Imry Holdings. Barclays took the company over when it collapsed in 1992 and has been negotiating for several months to dispose of it. Imry owns the Shires shopping centre in Leicester as well as a large site awaiting development in the centre of Southampton. It now has only one bidder, the Dutch property fund Rodamco, following the withdrawal of the publicly quoted Chelsfield last week. Rodamco is believed to have offered just under pounds 450m gross, while Chelsfield's offer was "some tens of millions" below that, industry insiders say. Elliott Bernerd, chairman of Chelsfield, said at the time of the pull-out that his group "was not prepared to chase values beyond those with which we were comfortable on a long-term basis".The central issue is the cost of developing the Southampton site, which has planning permission for one of the largest retail centres in Europe. The estimated cost is pounds 300m, but it seems that Chelsfield and other bidders, including British Land, are taking a more pessimistic view than Rodamco.Imry is the only non-financial company owned by Barclays and has been a running source of embarrassment. The bank funded a highly geared buyout at the peak of the boom, in 1989 and had to convert its debt to equity - in effect taking ownership - when Imry collapsed three years later It also wrote off pounds 190m of debt..

Coopers & Lybrand will look to acquire a medium-sized City law firm once its own fledgling law firm is up and running later this year, writes Richard Halstead. Candidates include top 30 law firms such as Ashurst Morris Crisp, Travers Smith Braithwaite and Wilde Sapte, according to sources in the legal profession. Coopers became the latest Big Six accountant to set up a legal practice when it announced on Friday that it was recruiting two solicitors from the City firm of Stephenson Harwood to set up a firm specialising initially in commercial and intellectual property work.Rival accountancy firm Arthur Andersen kicked off the trend three years ago, and last year Price Waterhouse announced it was setting up a law firm. The entry of Coopers into the market has been widely predicted ever since.The two Coopers recruits, Mark Lewis and Christopher Tite, will be released from their contracts by Stephenson Harwood in April. They will start work for Coopers shortly afterwards, operating under the name of Tite & Lewis.While neither Coopers nor the lawyers themselves would add to the statement they made on Friday, it is believed that they will try to build up expertise in the commercial, corporate and corporate finance sectors very quickly, either by poaching from other firms or recruiting individually.It is thought they will then seek a merger with an existing law firm with the skills to service Coopers' clients worldwide.