Premier League confirms £4.5bn three-year renewal of TV rights


The Premier League's £4.5billion TV rights rollover was condemned by the Football League as a "missed opportunity" to mend the game's ongoing financial turmoil.

An extra £100million solidarity payment will fail to tackle the "status quo of an unbalanced, unsustainable, and unfair" system, according to a withering appraisal from the lower tiers. Under Government dispensation, the deal confirmed by the top flight is almost like-for-like that which was agreed in 2018 with Sky, BT, Amazon and the BBC.

Only BT Sport will tweak its arrangement, moving Saturday lunchtime kick-offs to an evening slot when teams have been in Champions League midweek action. While that will leave more fans than ever facing late night journeys home, the pledge is a victory for Jurgen Klopp and other managers from the Big Six.

The Liverpool boss was embroiled in a heated exchange with BT Sport journalist Des Kelly amid suggestions his players were getting burned out by the TV scheduling. Extra funding for the pyramid, first disclosed by the Daily Telegraph last month as a potential bargaining chip with Government, does not include any extra help for the Championship.

The private nature of the sale, instead of holding the normal open tender process, required the Government to agree in principle to an exclusion order under the Competition Act. The Government says it is “minded to” approve such an order but will consider representations from interested parties before making its final decision, and it is understood the EFL could raise a challenge to it. However, the EFL believes ministers should have driven a harder bargain and forced a wholesale rethink of how television revenue is split.

Instead, senior figures believe parachute payments should have been scrapped as part of a new model. “While we recognise the attempts by the Government to increase the level of solidarity provided to League One and Two clubs through this process, what is more urgently required is a fundamental reset of the game’s financial model – both in terms of fairer distribution of monies at all levels and sensible, realistic cost control measures to ensure clubs will live within their means,” a league statement read.

“Today’s announcement appears to have been a missed opportunity for the Government to obtain a commitment from the Premier League to address the financial imbalance that exists between the top division and the rest of football and comes just a matter of weeks since football and authorities unified with a collective voice to protect the integrity of the top division and wider pyramid in this country.”

The Premier League, meanwhile, sees its contributions to the wider game as “world-leading” and highlighted that £450m will go to EFL clubs over the next rights cycle, excluding parachute payments. Chief executive Richard Masters, who has overseen the deal while fighting off the challenge of the Project Big Picture and Super League proposals, said that he hoped an extraordinary year had strengthened the league’s unity.

Calling separately for the rebel six European Super League to be punished “justly and appropriately”, he said: “I think some good can come out of this in the sense that the collective will end up being stronger and the Premier League organisation will end up being stronger because of it but I think that goes for a lot of things that have happened this year. The stresses and strains we have been under.”

He joked that after 30 meetings for executives of the 20 clubs and the Premier League over the pandemic – instead of the usual five – they would all benefit from a summer not seeing each other. “We need to put the ESL behind us which means talking to the clubs involved and finding out what happened before we can move forward and that process is ongoing,” Masters said. He said that the punishments for the rebel six, which it is understood will be significant fines, would be done “efficiently” – “justly and appropriately is my way of putting it.”

The Premier League will go to market with its remaining international rights territories-in the rest of Europe; north and south America and much of Asia-as usual. Discussing the rollover of the rights deals, Masters said that the Premier League “economy” had lost £2 billion so far over the course of the pandemic and that the renewed domestic deal offered “financial security” and “certainty over uncertainty”.

He expects a return of stadiums full-to-capacity with fans for the start of the new season on Aug 14, observing that “mood music and the messages coming out of government are positive”. Politicians agreed with the Premier League that there were “exceptional and compelling reasons” to back the renewal.

A written ministerial statement from the sports minister Nigel Huddleston said the government was “content” that the Premier League’s request for an exclusion order had nothing to do with the European Super League proposals.

Analysis: Masters looks to have achieved one of the Premier League's great coups

By Tom Morgan

Richard Scudamore was still packing up his bags at the Premier League's West London HQ in 2018 when the TV analysts first predicted the boom years were over.

With Sky and BT openly talking of trimming their spend on sport in the years to come, the long-serving executive chairman had timed his retirement impeccably. Pity his successor, it seemed, as at least two subsequent candidates baulked at warnings clubs should be braced for losses in excess of £600m on the next sell off.

Three years on, however, and amid the unprecedented financial chaos of Covid, the internal candidate who finally got the top job has pulled off what appears to be one of the league's great coups.

Despite Simon Green, the head of BT Sport, warning this year that a "rights correction" beckoned, Richard Masters secured a £4.5bn rights rollover that swims against the tide.

The inevitable question, then, is what are the broadcasters getting out of it? The packages suggest very little, with the Premier League reverting to almost exactly the same model as it did prior to the pandemic. Like the terms agreed in 2018, Sky Sports gets 128 matches per season, the same carve up of various Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Friday slots.

BT Sport again gets 52 matches per season, but-following the complaints of Jurgen Klopp and others-have agreed to move their Saturday lunchtime slots to evening when featured teams have been in midweek Champions League action.

Sources close to the Premier League also say the same number of 3pm matches will return along with the broadcasting blackout when crowds return in full from the start of next season.

However, the devil is likely to be in the detail when the new deal kicks in next year, with access to players an area still up for negotiation. Sky and BT will have looked on in envy at the behind-closed-doors scenes of the All Or Nothing documentary series, particularly those changing room histrionics at Tottenham Hotspur.

While such access during a live match would be an anathema for every Premier League manager, the broadcasters have clout like never before to push for any marginal gains.


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