Licence-fee payers’ money was at risk of being wasted when the BBC paid more than £1 million for the rights to broadcast FA Cup matches on Radio 5 Live, the Corporation’s regulator said yesterday.

The BBC Trust, responding to a complaint from TalkSPORT, 5 Live’s commercial rival, said that the corporation had not ensured with “sufficient rigour” that the amount it had bid represented “value for money”.

Although the trust fell short of saying that the BBC had overpaid — there was “insufficient evidence” of that — it said that BBC bosses had breached the corporation’s charter because they were not able to justify how much they had bid.

Moz Dee, programme director of TalkSPORT, said: “We have no idea if the BBC are giving the licence-fee payer best value. It’s like us saying we will pay £5 to buy a tie, and the BBC saying it will pay £50 or £55, but not being able to justify how they arrive at that figure.”

The BBC controls the radio broadcast rights to all FA Cup matches until 2012, as part of a four-year agreement with the Football Association. The value of the deal has not been disclosed, but it is thought to be more than £1 million.

BBC bosses were also told that they should think twice about whether they needed to scoop up all the available rights. TalkSPORT complained that 5 Live and Sports Extra, its sister station, could transmit only two live matches simultaneously when, in early rounds, there were many more being played.

“We think this ruling about exclusivity is very significant,” Mr Dee said. “We want to share rights — like we are with the 2010 World Cup — so that brands have a chance of being associated with a major football event like that on radio”.

TalkSPORT insiders said they hoped that the ruling would mean “the end of exclusive sport on the BBC” but the rap on the knuckles is unlikely to lead to as radical an overhaul. Instead, BBC bosses were told they should conduct “proper competitive impact assessment” every time they bid for sports rights.

Although the BBC routinely is outbid for football rights on television by ITV and BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, its position in radio is much stronger. Its only serious competitor is TalkSPORT, owned by UTV, of Belfast, but there is a wide discrepancy in the budgets they have available.

5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra have editorial budgets totalling £59.1 million, according to the BBC’s most recent annual report, well ahead of TalkSPORT’s budget, which is closer to £12 million.

A spokesman for the BBC said that the trust “did not find any evidence that the BBC either overpaid for the rights, nor acted anti-competitively”, but conceded that the trust “has identified some issues”. The spokesman added: “The BBC will work with the trust to more clearly demonstrate the work it is doing to ensure value for money.”

Meanwhile, Jeremy Darroch, chief executive of BSkyB, launched his own attack on the BBC, saying that the publicly funded broadcaster benefited unfairly from the “crown jewels” rules that restrict certain sporting events to free-to-air television. Events protected include the FA Cup Final, the Olympics, the football World Cup finals, the Wimbledon finals and the Grand National.

Speaking at the Leaders in Football conference, Mr Darroch said that the “listed events” rules are a “double dip” for the BBC and argued that they should be scrapped. He added: “The licence fee already taxes the public in every corner of the UK; the BBC should not be allowed a second tax on sport so they can spend that money on other priorities.”

There was also criticism of a review being conducted by Ofcom, the communications regulator, which is examining whether the price at which Sky sells its sports channels to other broadcasters is too high. A group of rivals, including BT and Virgin Media, want Sky’s prices to set at lower “wholesale” rates so that they may pick them up more cheaply. Mr Darroch said that “it is frankly absurd to be told that we have to sell on our channels at regulated prices to BT — a far larger company — because it is somehow incapable of competing against us”.

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