The league is currently bringing court proceedings against ITV Digital's parent companies to try to recover the £180m that was outstanding for the TV rights deal when ITV Digital went bust in April.
Brian Philpotts, former commercial director of the Football League responsible for negotiating the deal, admitted in court yesterday that he did not ask for a guarantee from Carlton and Granada that they would pick up the bill if ITV Digital got into financial difficulty.
Philpotts said: "I always took it for granted the deal was backed by Carlton and Granada. No request for a guarantee was ever made."
However, the league maintains that Carlton and Granada should be held responsible for the money ITV Digital owed when it sank.
The league claims that in part of the contract there was a clause implying that shareholders from Carlton and Granada would bail out their subsidiary company in the face of any financial difficulty.
The ITV companies have so far denied that they made any such guarantees and that they were never asked to. They also pointed out that the small print in the contract always contained the words "subject to contract".
Philpotts claims he was duped into thinking that Carlton was involved in the negotiations, because Carlton's commercial director Tom Betts was present in several of the meetings.
However, Carlton said that Betts was on secondment to ITV Digital and was working directly for it.
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