UNITED Woodward expecting big-money bidders for TV rights
ED Woodward is set to discover if Facebook and Amazon will enter the bidding for Premier League broadcast rights.
The United executive vice chairman has predicted moves from the digital giants to provide competition to Sky and BT Sport in upcoming rights deals.
With the first round of domestic bids due today, Premier League clubs are anticipating another boost in revenue particularly if new media organisations threaten the dominance of traditional television broadcasters.
The current deal is worth £8.6bn - but that could significantly increase as part of the next rights aggreement. And Woodward is bullish about the ongoing popularity of the game. “Reports of the death of live sport are greatly exaggerated,” he told investors on the New York Stock Exchange. “I just came from a Premier League meeting where research shows that the league’s global cumulative audience has increased nine percent yearon-year, with particular strong increases in Asia and North America.” Facebook launched an unsuccessful bid of £444m for the digital rights to Indian Premier League cricket last year. Amazon have shown their commitment to live sport, snapping up rights to the NFL and ATP tennis. Ed Woodward
Woodward has previously spoken about the ‘very big numbers’ the digital firms could bring to the table.
And Facebook’s head of sports Dan Reed refused to rule out the prospect of entering the bidding when quizzed on the subject last October.
“It’s a very sensitive point of time,” said Woodward. “The first round of domestic bids is due Friday.
“If you look at past history, we would expect that the entire process for selling the domestic rights will conclude in a relatively short period of time, within a couple of weeks.”
When previously discussing potential interest from Facebook and Amazon, Woodward was clear about the effect they could have on a new aggreement.
“Absolutely I think they’ll enter the mix,” he said. “Anecdotally there was strong interest in the last cycle, and we’re hearing that around the Premier League table, but we’re also hearing that from a European perspective as well in terms of interest in the Champions League and Europa League rights.
“Looking at the interest Facebook and Amazon had in the Indian Premier League rights, anecdotally it sounded like very big numbers.”
The latest Champions League TV rights deal is also close to completion, with Woodward also anticipating another windfall for Europe’s top clubs.
“They are nearly done now on selling the global rights for the next cycle, which starts next year,” he said. “There’s been a lot of indication of an increase, which has been well guided for the last year, but I would expect some announcement of those numbers coming through in the next month.”