sky Wins Race For EFL Rights

The English Football League (EFL) has named Sky Sports as its preferred bidder for its next round of broadcast rights.

The British subscription sports channels look set to retain the broadcast rights for the EFL, from 2024 onwards, despite strong interest from rival streaming companies DAZN, TNT Sports and Viaplay.

Sky holds a strong relationship with the EFL, having possessed its live rights since 2002. Last October, however, the league issued a request for proposals where potential bidders were told it was willing to make its entire inventory of 1,891 games a season available. A move which would mean scrapping the rule that blocks the domestic broadcast of games which kick off at 3pm on Saturdays.

Global sports and entertainment platform DAZN revealed its plan to make every single Championship, League One and League Two match available to fans last week in what would have been a pivotal moment in the history of UK football broadcasting.

TNT Sports, the new service born from the merger between BT Sport and Warner Bros Discovery, and Scandinavian streamer Viaplay also expressed an interest in the rights package.

Despite the interest from rival broadcasters, the EFL has now confirmed Sky Sports will retain the rights, and the 3pm blackout will remain for the foreseeable future.

‘The EFL has now completed a full and comprehensive review of the multiple submissions received as part of its broadcast rights sales process from 2024 onwards.

‘The league will now enter into an exclusive month-long negotiating period with the preferred bidder, Sky Sports.’

The broadcaster also screens matches in the earlier rounds of the EFL Cup and the semi-finals and final of the EFL Trophy.

The current five-year deal with Sky Sports, which was signed in 2018, is worth a record £595m, an increase of almost a third on the previous deal. However, the deal was still hugely criticised by several of the bigger Championship clubs for undervaluing the EFL’s appeal.

Clubs have been keen to highlight that Sky Sports only televises about 5% of the games every season, with the vast majority of those being Championship fixtures, suggesting that they would have favoured an alternative broadcast deal, and the lifting of the 3pm blackout rule.