BBC Retains Premier League Highlights Deal
Highlights of Premier League games will continue to be shown on the BBC’s ‘Match of the Day’ programme after the terrestrial broadcaster renewed its rights deal until the end of 2012-13 season in a contract believed to be worth in the region of £170m.
The new three-year highlights deal, the figure for which is thought to have matched the £171m paid for the existing three-year contract, allows the BBC to continue to show Match of the Day on Saturday and Sunday and MOTD2 on Sunday evenings – and other evenings when fixtures justify.
In addition as a new element to the contract, MOTD2 will be available on BBC iPlayer, its online video service, every Tuesday from the start of the 2010-11 season when the deal begins.
Despite an increase in the number of live Premier League matches available to viewers, the average audiences have steadily increased since 2004, when the programme returned to BBC1, from 3.4m to 3.8m last season.
MOTD2 has also been a success, with average audiences increasing from 1.5m to 2.5m over the same period.
The deal is the first of a crucial new batch of contracts to be negotiated by the Premier League that will run from August 2010 to 2013, as it attempts to match the total of £2.7bn that it brought in last time.
Next week is the closing date for bids for the main live rights packages with BSkyB and Setanta, which paid £1.3bn and £392m respectively for the current deal, hopeful of retaining their share of the rights. Disney-owned US sports giant ESPN is also understood to be considering a bid.
