Premier League TV growth halted as UK rights sold for $6bn
LONDON — The Premier League’s inflationary bubble burst Tuesday when the $6 billion sale of British television rights produced a drop in the value of matches.
The past two domestic deals both produced 70 per cent jumps in the value of rights, fueling spiraling wages and transfer fees and cementing the competition’s status as the world’s richest league. But the auction of 2019-2022 rights left two of the seven packages still up for sale as Sky emerged the big winner and rival broadcaster BT saw its position weakened.
The sale of 160 games has raised 4.464 billion pounds ($6.2 billion), compared with 5.14 billion pounds for 168 fixtures from 2016 to 2019. The league will be looking to the sale of overseas rights to provide an upsurge in revenue for its 20 teams, who split the foreign income equally.
While remaining the biggest broadcaster of most games in Britain with four packages, Sky boasted how it was now paying 16 per cent less per fixture in its 3.579 billion pound, three-year deal to show 128 games per season. That equates to savings of almost 600 million pounds for the European pay TV giant while showing an additional two games a year from the league it helped to grow from its inception in 1992.