Bskyb Renews Premier League Rights Deal
The Premier League is on track to match the £1.7bn brought in from the sale of domestic TV rights in the last contract period after BSkyB reached a deal to retain its four packages of live matches for a further three years.
BSkyB has agreed a renewal deal with the Premier League covering the 2010/11 to 2012/13 seasons which will see the pay-TV broadcaster continue to screen 92 out of the 138 live matches available.
Although no fee has been revealed, the contract, which covers four of the available six packages of live matches, is thought to be worth close to the £1.314bn that the broadcaster paid for its existing deal.
The remaining two packages of rights, currently held by Setanta in a deal worth £392m, will go to a second round of bidding with the incumbent reportedly facing competition from BSkyB and Disney-owned US network ESPN.
Under European Union regulation, a single broadcaster is entitled to own five of the six rights packages but cannot hold a total monopoly on all live coverage of the Premier League.
Last week, the BBC renewed its highlights rights deal until the end of 2012-13 season in a contract believed to be worth £173m – a slight increase on the previous contract.
The overseas broadcast rights, which are also up for renewal in 2010, generated a total of £625m over the same three-year period when they were renegotiated in January 2007.
Despite the global economic downturn, TV rights to the Premier League have retained their commercial appeal – a significant issue given how dependent the clubs are on the revenue derived from the broadcast contracts.
