The runaway football television juggernaut had to slam on the brakes on Tuesday, 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 in 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 is in contrast 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.
The Premier League have announced the winners of five out of seven packages for TV rights
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 just the one Saturday lunchtime package for which they have paid £295m a season. The 32 games cost £9.2m each, a big increase on the £7.6m per game they currently pay.
With so few Premier League matches to offer customers, BT Sport could go the way of Setanta and ESPN, previous junior PL partners to Sky, unless they pick up at least one of the unsold packages. Embarrassingly for the Premier League, two 20-match blocks 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’. Amazon are believed to be interested in simulcast rights for the midweek fixtures but Discovery and Facebook are understood not to have entered the bidding.
Sky have won four of the packages so far, with BT earning the rights for the other
With the domestic auction incomplete, the Premier League refrained from holding their usual media conference at the end of a process and issued a press statement instead.
Chief executive Richard 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. Both broadcasters are fantastic partners.
‘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.’
The slowdown for domestic rights has been offset by a buoyant start to the overseas sales in China, Africa, United States and Brazil. That points to at least a 40 per cent increase on the £3bn brought in last time.
Barney Francis, managing director of Sky Sports, added: ‘Our customers will continue to enjoy unrivalled Premier League coverage through to 2022 with 128 live matches a season from next year — more than ever before — including the key head-to-heads in the best slots.’
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.’
Nervertheless, BT shares are back to where they were before BT began broadcasting sport — and down 55 per cent from their peak after the monopoly live Champions League deal was done for the second time in 2017.