Sky the big winners in bidding war
THE runaway football television juggernaut had to slam on the brakes yesterday, slowing down to the extent that the Premier League suffered a significant drop in TV rights income.
The £4.46billion paid by Sky and BT for three seasons starting 2019-20 compares to £5.1bn from the existing deal, although the two minor packages of midweek games remain unsold. The fall of more than £500m over three years compares to the 70 per cent rise in the last tender.
The major winners are Sky Sports, who have secured more games for almost £600m less — a drop of 16 per cent — plus total dominance over rivals BT Sport.
Sky have picked up the four best packages out of seven in the auction and all the first picks for every weekend for £3.6bn. This works out at £9.3m a game, down from £11m in the current contract.
Their packages — and they could pick up one more 20-game set to reach the maximum of 148 — means they retain their Sunday showcase monopoly plus Monday night and Saturday night games.
BT Sport won only the one Saturday lunchtime package for which they have paid £295m. The 32 games cost £9.2m each, a big increase on the £7.6m per game they are currently paying.
With that small amount of Premier League matches to offer customers, the BT sports business model could go the way of doomed Setanta and ESPN, previous junior PL partners to Sky, unless they pick up at least one of the two unsold packages.
Somewhat embarrassingly for the Pre- mier League, two 20-match packages of midweek and Bank Holiday games did not attract the offers they wanted.
That auction will continue into next week with the PL saying there are ‘multiple bidders’ believed to include tech giants Amazon interested in the simulcast rights for the midweek fixtures. But Discovery and Facebook are not understood to have entered the bidding.
But the fact that 40 live games in two packages remain unsold — the first time this has happened at a Premier League auction — shows that PL chief executive Richard Scudamore and his TV advisors were not satisfied with the offers on the table however many bidders might have put in offers.
With the auction incomplete, the Premier League refrained from holding their usual media conference at the end of a process — issuing a press statement instead. Scudamore said: ‘We are extremely pleased that BT and Sky continue to view the Premier League and our clubs as such an important part of their offering. To have achieved this investment with two packages of live rights remaining to sell is an outcome that is testament to the excellent football competition delivered by the clubs. It provides them with certainty.’
The slowdown for domestic rights is not all doom and gloom for the Premier League as a buoyant start to the overseas sales in China, Africa, United States and Brazil points to at least a 40 per cent increase on the £3 billion brought in last time from the worldwide market.
Marc Allegra, chief executive of BT’s Consumer division said: ‘We’re delighted that our customers will be able to continue enjoying Saturday games on BT Sport.’
However, the overall importance of football rights to BT is shown by their shares being down to where they were at before BT started broadcasting sport.