SCOTTISH football chiefs have held face-to-face talks with some of the world's richest companies in their bid to find the best television deal.

The current contract with Sky and BT Sports runs out in 2020 and Neil Doncaster, the SPFL chief executive, is expected to announce a new TV agreement before the end of this year.

Les Gray, vice-chairman of Hamilton Academical and formerly SPFL board member, revealed that the league are a long way down the line to signing a contract which will be hugely beneficial to the Scottish game.

Gray said: "I have been at lots of meeting at Sky and BT Sports with the SPFL board and it was all positive. We will go out to tender, the new board will determined when that it, and I’m sure that will be this year.

“I can tell you that Neil has met with our TV rights specialist, a guy called Phil Lines, and in turn they have met with Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google to name a few. They have reported back to the clubs in a confidential manner.

“It is now all about whether these people are ready to come to the party when we go out to tender. They have dipped their toe in the way so we shall see what happens.

“I wouldn’t want to put a number on it but it needs to be a big number for us to excite us and drive the product forward.

“The television deal is paramount to the success of the league. It feeds certainly eight or nine of the Premiership clubs a huge amount of their revenue stream.

“In terms of percentage of Celtic and Rangers, maybe a few more, the revenue from a TV deal won’t be as significant as it is to ourselves.

“All 42 clubs rely on that revenue to thrive, in particular the full-time teams. So if we cannot get a deal which reflects the value in all of our leagues at this point, it would be very disappointing.

“Having being on the board during reconstruction of the league, part of that process was to try and distribute the funds in a fairer manner to all 42 clubs, particularly the top two leagues so clubs can stay full-time – and we’ve done that.

“Neil and his board can be unsung heroes because they do a lot of unseen work which does raise revenue."