Football Finance

By Paul Nicholson
February 11 – For the first time the overseas broadcast rights revenues for the Premier League will be higher than the domestic broadcast deal.
Club bosses were told yesterday that the value of the international TV deals will be £5.3 billion in the 2022-25 cycle. Add that to the £5.1 billion domestic TV deal and the premier league will bank more than £10 billion in broadcast revenue over its next commercial cycle.

April 28 – The Premier League’s underpinning £1.5 billion domestic TV rights deals could be rolled over for at least another two years if government agrees to waive any competition law concerns.
The Premier League has held talks with current rights holders Sky, BT Sport, Amazon and the BBC with a view to extending their current deals unchanged from the current agreements that end with the 2021-22 season. The auction for the new domestic rights would under normal circumstances have already begun with a view to having a three-season deal in place well in advance of the August 2022 cycle.

By Andrew Warshaw
May 29 – It won’t look the same, it won’t feel the same. But the millions for whom football is the best possible drug to lift spirits during the Covid-19 crisis will be delighted by the news.
The Premier League is back,  on June 17 to be precise – roughly at the same time as Serie A and La Liga – even though Britain has the highest corona-related death rate in the world outside the United States.

October 13 – Viewing figures for Premier League football in the UK are showing a rebound in interest from the start of the season, after summer data showed that viewing figures for Sky’s Premier League coverage had slumped to their lowest point in seven years last season.
For the 2017-18 season Sky has drawn an average of 819,000 TV viewers per match, an 8% over a year earlier, according to data from Enders Analysis. Read more …

April 20 – The new Premier League TV deal came in the nick of time for the English top division’s 20 clubs, which have run up an aggregate loss in 2015-16 after two seasons of impressive profits.
New analysis from professional service firm Deloitte’s sports business group has put aggregate pre-tax losses for the clubs at £110 million on combined revenues of £3.6 billion.
With revenue set to surge again in 2016-17, Read more …

By Andrew Warshaw
September 4 – In a move that took most of the footballing world by surprise, the English Premier League has pulled the plug on its overseas television deal with Chinese broadcaster PPTV – with immediate effect and after just one season.
PPTV, part of retail group Suning, paid an estimated £530 million for three years of rights from the 2019-20 season but has now been scrapped.

May 15 – The Premier League’s plans to resume the season next month have been given a boost with Britain’s Culture and Sport secretary Oliver Dowden saying the government was “opening the door” for football to return in June behind closed doors with the possibility of more accessibility to armchair fans.
Mass gatherings are still banned and fans are not allowed to attend sports events but the Premier League needs to complete its season in order to fulfil lucrative broadcasting contracts...

By Paul Nicholson
June 7 – The final Premier League TV rights packages for the UK have been awarded with Amazon swooping in with a groundbreaking deal that breaks Sky and BT’s grip on the broadcast of live games in the UK.
Amazon will livestream exclusive coverage of 20 matches a season online from 2019 to 2021. Amazon’s UK Prime Video subscribers will be able to watch 10 Premier League matches over one bank holiday and another 10 during one midweek round of matches. Read more …