BT have agreed an eye-popping £6.5m per match deal with the Premiership to replace ESPN.
The three year deal gives the Premiership a 70% increase in broadcasting revenue with BSkyB remaining as the chief broadcaster.
With a recession going on and advertising budgets being trimmed across the board the £246m/per season BT deal has taken the broadcasting world be surprise.
The sales of broadcasting rights for the next three seasons has brought in £3.018m to English football.
Whether ESPN will increase their interest in other football, primarily the SPL remains to be seen but the scale of the investment from BT is certain to fuel the Premiership gravy train until 2016 at least.
A spokesman for ESPN said: “We’re looking forward to continuing our Premier League coverage next season, and continuing to serve fans with great live sports events and programming including the FA Cup, Europa League, Scottish Premier League, Serie A, Premiership Rugby, Top 14, golf, darts, UFC, NBA and much more.”
Announcing it’s new deal a statement from BT explained: “We will offer new interactive features when supplied over BT’s fibre network and we will look to distribute it on other platforms.
Premiership chief executive Richard Scudamore added: “We welcome BT as a new Premier League broadcast partner.
“They are a substantial British company that is at the leading edge of technology and infrastructure development.”
BT have secured two of the seven packages on offer giving them 38 games a season covering 28 Saturday lunchtime matches and 10 midweek and bank holiday fixtures.
BskyB will show 116 games per season meaning that 40% of all matches will be broadcast live per season.
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REMEMBER SETANTA? WAIT & SEE,
My first thoughts: disgusting and obscene.
Do people in England think they really have that great a product that they’re willing to shell out, what will no doubt, be a substantial hike in prices to pay for this? Who will continue to pay when people have no money? Will it really turn into an F1 style game that only really the rich can afford?
As far as I’m concerned they will be paying for a competition that really isn’t as competitive as they think. They talk about the Scottish product and it being a two-horse race and the rest of the teams just fight it out among themselves for third, fourth and so on.
Bear in mind we have a much smaller league size to the EPL, they actually have less competition. You know that every single year without fail, it’s going to be Man Utd v (insert team here). That appears to be the only competition. The rest are competing for third, fourth and so on. However, with billionaire playboys now running the show, it’s really a matter of who has the most to spend. Well, at the moment it looks like Man City. Man Utd for all their faults got where they are today with sheer hard work that they have built up over decades. Man City have a guy come in and spend £1bn and just nudge taking the title then people say it was a great fight.
Really? I expected them to win it with the money they put in. It was no fight at all. Any billionaire can buy a title and they have. Previously, it was Chelsea. Where is the competition in this? The so-called competition in England has only changed in terms of who will try to compete with Man Utd. Anything else is an illusion or delusion but then again they always were good at making people believe they are better than they actually are!
Leaving competition aside, the EPL is already bloated with self-aggrandising prima donnas and they want to pay them more??? I give you an example from Italy’s opening game of Euro 2012. Adrian Chiles fawned over how much the shades, the watch and earring Balotelli was wearing would buy several cars.
This disgusted me. At a time when people are struggling to feed their families, you have idiots like this rubbing everyone’s noses in it. Well, we all know what happened to Marie-Antoinette. These people are paid ridiculous sums of money, can’t play an ‘honest’ game of football and behave like spoilt brats and are ruining the game. Mark my words this will all come crashing down and I’ll be there rubbing my hands with glee when it lies in tatters around them.
I agree.
I think someone at BT is going to look at these figures and realise that there is no way that they can get close to breaking even on this deal.