PL’s new TV ‘super pack’ to tempt giants like Amazon
THE Premier League could merge their unsold UK rights for 2019-22 into one ‘super pack’ of action that includes 40 live games per season, ‘near live’ rights to all 380 games per year as well as all ‘clip rights’ that allow almost instantaneous screening of all goals as they are scored.
This would be the first time that rights to live games are sold along with nearlive rights.
Sky currently own the near-live rights to all games and use those to pack out their schedules with ‘catch-up’ content. Sky’s parent company own the clip rights (at around £15million a year) and use them via various newspaper websites and apps. Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore (above) intended to sell 200 live games per season to broadcasters for the three-year period, across seven packages, five of 32 games, and two of 20. The five 32-game packages were sold last week, four to Sky and one to BT Sport, for a combined £4.464 billion. The two 20game packs remain unsold, although ‘multiple bidders’, including Sky, BT and Amazon, are interested, just not at the reserve price the League want. The PL’s preferred option is to meet interested parties and sell the last two packages, each for two whole rounds of games, on Bank Holidays and in midweek. Contrary to many reports there is no requirement that the games in those packages are simulcast, or shown at the same time. There could be four or more Bank Holiday slots and the same in midweek. Any one buyer of the 40 unsold games per season would be getting up to six of the 30 ‘all Big 6’ games each season. And because there are four full rounds of games, they can promise the fans of the teams who draw the biggest audiences — Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester City — their clubs will all be live four times in those four match rounds.
The drawback with the two 20-game packages for any new entrant to the market, such as Amazon, is they provide only sporadic content over a long season. A ‘super pack’ would remedy that in an instant, with potential for ‘live goals’ programming on match days, if not whole live games. A ‘super pack’ with all 40 live games would bar Sky from bidding for it, as a broadcaster cannot own the rights to more than 148 games, and they have 128 for the 2019-22 seasons already.