Sky & Bt Pay £5.1bn For Live Premier League

11 Feb 2015 | sigadmin

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Live Premier League football in the UK will remain on Sky Sports and BT Sport until the end of the 2018/19 season, after paying a combined £5.136 billion for the rights.

The staggering total, announced on Tuesday evening, represents a 70% increase on the current deal – worth £3.018 billion – which runs until the end of next season.

For the new three-year cycle, the Premier League offered 168 live games – averaging £10.19 million per game – split across seven packages.

Sky won five of the seven match packages made available by the league, including a new set of Friday night games.

In addition, it will continue to broadcast its ‘Super Sunday’ double-headers, as well as Saturday lunchtime, Monday evening and bank holiday games, after committing £4.18 billion over the three-year period.

BT Sport, meanwhile, has taken the remaining two packages, entitling it to 42 live games per season, taking the Saturday evening slot and additional midweek fixtures – paying £960 million over three seasons from 2016/17.

No single broadcaster was allowed to secure more than 126 live matches – with Sky securing the maximum number of games it was allowed to bid for.

Sky has committed to paying £11 million per game over the course of the contract, BT will pay £7.6 million for each match.

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore did not confirm whether there were other bidders for the packages, amid speculation that Eurosport, backed by new parent company Discovery Networks International, would enter the process, while Qatari broadcaster BeIn Sports was also rumoured to be in contention.

Scudamore added: “We know from this process there are many interested parties who would like to get hold of Premier League rights.

“We are grateful to Sky since 1992 for the investment they’ve made. They are great partners of ours but they more than anybody know that once every three years – and this happened in the last week – we break that relationship in order to run a very open process where anybody can come along, on a standalone basis and buy these rights. That’s the way it’s been for some time and the way it will continue to be.”

The latest rights are in addition to Premier League highlights, which Match of the Day secured last month after the BBC paid £204 million to extend its run for a further three years.

The funds will not stop there, however, with the Premier League yet to begin its international rights sales process for the 2016/17 to 2018/19 period. The last cycle for global sales outside the UK generated over £2 billion.