English setup can help lift PSL’s game

IF anything, the competition from the English Premier League (EPL) should be welcomed, and is a signal to SA’s R558-million PSL and the country’s sports industry that it needs to shape up. There’s money to be made. While SuperSport paid the PSL about R2-billion for its five-year broadcast rights deal in 2011, it forked out about R3-billion for its threeyear rights deal with the EPL.

The PSL would do well to study its English counterpart.

The EPL’s annual revenue outstrips that of several companies on the JSE Top 40, including the likes of Vodacom, which is among South Africa’s biggest sports sponsors. Deloitte’s annual global football index expects the EPL’s revenues for 2013-14 to exceed R50-billion for the first time in the league’s history, 25% more than that of the 2012-13 season.

EPL chief executive Richard Scudamore has confirmed the estimate, which includes revenues to the teams and to the league itself, was about accurate.

The 25% increase year on year follows a R2.5-billion broadcast deal for the rights in the US, where football languishes at the bottom of the sports food chain.

Barclays alone pays the EPL R2.1-billion over three years for the right to call it the Barclays Premier League, while BSkyB and BTSports have paid about R18-billion a year for the broadcast rights in the UK.

Scudamore said 804- million viewers had access to EPL, but there were still largely untapped opportunities to spread the gospel to China, India and the US.

The EPL employs only 100 people, and it needs no more than that, said Scudamore.

Everything else was left up to the 20 clubs that make up the EPL in any given year — marketing, fan engagement, merchandising and the onfield production, drama-filled matches that reel in the fans game after game, season after season.

League attendances were at 92%, averaging more than 35 000 fans a match.

It was second only to the German Bundesliga.