FA signs over television rights to UEFA
The Football Association has agreed for UEFA, European football's governing body, to sell the television rights to England qualifiers on its behalf.
The FA and its fellow 52 European football associations had previously been left to sell rights to their country's games direct to television networks themselves. Now UEFA has convinced all of them to sell the rights collectively.
The arrangement will come into effect for the qualifying matches for Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup.
The thinking behind it is that TV income will be more evenly distributed across Europe and some commentators have speculated that the deal will benefit smaller nations at the expense of larger ones.
However the FA general secretary Alex Horne has trumpeted the deal and said that it guarantees more television income than had been expected.
Speaking to reporters at the UEFA Congress in Paris, Horne said: "We thought it through long and hard and we have got a good deal for ourselves out of it. It is higher than the current valuation of our rights.
"We have gone into this with our eyes wide open. It is a creative idea and we believe it will work.''