Premier League bosses have announced that the current TV deal with Sky, BT, Amazon and BBC have been renewed until Summer 2025.
Confirmation of the rollover of the existing contract from start of 2022-23 season sees the £4.7bn deal continue until the end of the 2024-25 campaign, covering live and non-live coverage across Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime Video and BBC Sport.
Sky will therefore continue to hold their traditional packages covering Super Sunday, Monday/Friday Night Football and the 5:30pm kick-off on Saturdays, along with selected Saturday Night Football coverage when appropriate.
BT will again have rights to Saturday lunchtime matches with kick-offs at 12:30pm plus some Sunday lunchtime picks, if certain selected games involve teams involved in UEFA Europa or Conference League action on preceding Thursdays.
Premier League clubs however have inserted a new clause which prohibits clubs who play in Europe on preceding Wednesday evenings being selected for the Saturday 12:30pm slot, meaning that any such picks by BT will instead air at 7:45pm.
BT will also retain rights to the allocated New Year and January midweek rounds in which all ten games will be broadcast, whilst Amazon will keep their December midweek pack plus the Xmas Bank Holiday round also covering all ten matches in each matchweek.
BBC will revert to their original pre-pandemic status of broadcasting free-to-air highlights across weekends and midweeks throughout the season, thereby concluding their time covering various league games live throughout the last 11 months.
This decision will also see the 3pm blackout window on Saturdays throughout each season extended until summer 2025 at the earliest, having been relaxed throughout the pandemic as games were held behind-closed-doors from last June and throughout this season.
It is widely expected that the relaxation of that specific non televised slot will be ended ahead of the new season from August, meaning that no matches at 3pm on Saturdays could be televised with spectators encouraged to instead attend matches in person.
This deal also has ‘approval in principle’ from the UK Government under the Competitions Act 1998 via an ‘Exclusion Order’, having been able to demonstrate justifiable ‘exceptional and compelling reasons’ in light of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
Premier League bosses will therefore be able to conclude this renewal deal without needing to conduct a broadcast rights tender process, which would of potentially allowed other broadcasters like Premier Sports and DAZN to bid for broadcasting rights.
Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Masters has thanked all four broadcast partners for opting to show “continued commitment” to the league and support for the wider pyramid within English Football.
Masters also confirmed that the league and clubs are “hugely appreciative” of the UK Government’s support in allowing this renewal to take place in order to “… reduce uncertainty, generate stability and promote confidence with [football].”
The Premier League will also provide £100m of funding to grassroots football throughout the English pyramid as part of this deal, on top of existing financial commitments to the sport as football continues to navigate the impact of the pandemic.
Leave a Reply