The UK government has agreed to the Premier League’s rolling-over media rights deal with BT Sport, Sky Sports, BBC Sport and Amazon Prime.
Earlier this year, it was announced that the English Premier League had ‘agreed on a deal in principle’ with its official broadcast partners from the 2022/23 season to the end of the 2024/25 season.
Hoping ‘provide certainty to clubs throughout professional football as a result of maintaining current levels of financial support of around £1.5 billion’, along with enabling the League to ‘commit to increased funding’, the proposals needed sign-off.
However, the government has officiated that it will make an Exclusion Order under the Competition Act 1998, enabling the deals to process without any need for a standard tender process.
The Chief Executive of the Premier League, Richard Masters, said, “The Premier League welcomes the Government’s approval to renew our UK broadcast arrangements for the next three-year cycle. This allows us to commit to increasing our support to the football pyramid and communities for the next four years, which is vital following the significant impact that COVID-19 has had on football.”
“We will work with our football partners to ensure that this investment helps the game recover and lay foundations for a positive future.”
The broadcasters are asked to ‘keep the costs of their packages at current levels’, with BT paying £325 million for 52 matches, Sky cashing out £1.193 billion for 128 top-tier matches, and 20 live fixtures per seasons costs between £20 million and £30 for Amazon. The rights for the highlights package has been acquired by the BBC.
Premier League will receive £1.7 billion through the renewals in domestic rights revenue per season until 2025.
Sports Minister, Nigel Huddleston added in a letter, ‘the risk of higher prices is low and outweighed by the significant public policy benefits that would be delivered by providing stability to the English football pyramid’.
On the other hand, the English top-flight has also decided to invest £100 million for the next four years into ‘solidarity and good causes funding’, such as the women’s game, National League pyramid, community football projects and the English Football League (EFL), League One and League Two clubs.