This was the World Cup the French would rather forget. The Blues returned without a single goal to their credit—an ignominious f

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问题     This was the World Cup the French would rather forget. The Blues returned without a single goal to their credit—an ignominious first for a defending champion. " Twisted and blinded by success and money," ran a typical editorial in Le Figaro , "the players and those around them neglected the most important thing: the football field. " The charge is a familiar one across Europe, where most of the sport’s superstars play for salaries that have an obscene number of zeros in them. The worry, however, is less that footballers are becoming too spoiled to play well than their teams are driving themselves to financial ruin.
    Each of the official footballing nations has its own specific problems, but the bottom line for many clubs is the same. "The increase in expenditure has simply exceeded the increase in revenue," says Thomas Kurth of G14, the loose association that groups Europe’s top clubs. Real Madrid had fallen $382 million into debt before selling off its training ground to developers last year.
    The scale of debts is tough to square with massive uptick in revenues the sport as a whole has enjoyed over the past decade. Rupert Murdoch set the ball rolling in 1992 when he outbid the BBC for the rights to show live matches of England’s Premier League on his BSkyB satellite channel. Competition intensified as other TV magnates quickly recognized the game’s potential as a means of pushing their new pay channels.
    Obviously club owners are the ones handing out the outlandish paychecks. "You can have highly talented businessmen who have run their own companies with huge success. But when the door shuts behind them at a club they become someone else," says Jean-Paul de la Fuente of Media Content, a sports-rights consultancy. These bosses are typically spared the more rigorous disciplines of the marketplace, including angry shareholders and stingy banks. Says Oliver Butler of Research Service Soccer Investor: "The financial authorities don’t regulate clubs as if they were limited companies—and the banks don’t want to be firebombed by the fans. "
    To avert ruin, however, clubs must learn the dreary business of cost control. One idea being discussed is to limit the team salary caps. Any form of compulsory cap, though, might fall afoul of EU anti-competition rules. Besides, such regulations won’t be welcome to the select band of clubs—mostly from the Premier League—that have already learned to balance their books and live by orthodox business codes. Other teams could learn a thing or two about winning from them.
The TV magnates are competing with each other for the right to

选项 A、attach themselves to an elite football club.
B、show advertisements made with superstars.
C、show live football matches of Premier League.
D、sponsor the football matches because of their potential.

答案C

解析 电视行业的巨头争夺的权利是[A]将自己和某个精英足球俱乐部联系起来。[B]播放超级明星拍摄的广告。[C]现场直播英超联赛的比赛。[D]因其潜在的商业价值而赞助足球比赛。第三段最后一句指出,当电视行业的其他巨头迅速认识到比赛能够推动他们新的收费频道的潜力后,竞争加剧了。再根据第二句话的例子,可以判断出他们争夺的是现场直播英超联赛的权利。所以本题的正确答案为[C]。
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