Premier League have issued a UK broadcast rights tender covering 2025-29 seasons.
The current broadcast deal between Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Amazon Prime plus BBC – who have free-to-air highlights rights – will expire upon the conclusion of 2024-25 season, with the contract up for renewal.
Premier League officials have consequently decided to put out a new tender covering 270 matches for live broadcast, split across five packages with all scheduled midweek and final-day fixtures set to be televised live in a fresh upgrade to live TV rights of Premier League fixtures.
In line with broadcast regulations, no single buyer will be permitted to acquire more than four of the five packages, with the established kick-off slots remaining and linked individually to one of the five packages available.
All weekend matches played on a Sunday will be aired live, including those displaced from Saturdays to Sundays due to clubs featuring in European competitions on preceding Thursdays, which will end recent complaints over untelevised Sunday games not available to watch on TV.
This decision also ensures that the Saturday 3pm blackout window will remain protected, in order to encourage fans to attend and participate across all levels of the sport in the traditional football slot across the country.
110 matches will consequently not be televised and will largely be played within the blackout window, unless postponement or clashes with latter stages of FA Cup permit movement to a midweek slot, with one broadcaster having near-live audio-visual rights.
Premier League have also opted to retain the short-form clips rights for all 380 matches across the season, which will be awarded to a single broadcaster.
The traditional FTA package will cover all 380 matches per season with BBC favourites to retain the rights, unless a surprise bidder emerges from ITV, Channel 4 or Channel 5 which looks unlikely at present.
In a change to previous tenders, this new deal will cover four seasons rather than the traditional three-season contracts.
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