The Premier League has completed the last piece in the jigsaw of its sale of domestic TV rights for the next three seasons, with Sky Sports planning to offer fans a “box set” of highlights of all their team’s matches that can be dipped into at any time.
Under the deal for “near live extended highlights”, which covers all 212 Premier League matches not already shown live on television, the broadcaster will for the first time offer a dedicated section for each club featuring every match they have played from next season.
When the near live category was introduced, which allows one match to be shown from 8pm on a Saturday and every other game from 10.30pm, some saw it as a rival to Match of the Day’s highlights.
However, while modestly popular, it never became a threat to the long running BBC highlights show. Instead, Sky now hopes fans will also treat it as an on demand resource to be dipped into throughout the week in order to catch up on long form highlights.
Dedicated sections for each Premier League club in its on demand section will also include club news, features and match action.
Between them Sky and BT Sport have already agreed to pay a record £5.14bn for the live rights to Premier League football from next season, with the former retaining the lion’s share of the matches.
From next season, the number of live matches on Sky will rise from 116 to 128. But the amount that the pay TV giant will pay for those games will rise to £4.2bn.
BT will pay £960m over three years for live 42 matches per season. The BBC also renewed its Match of the Day highlights contract for £204m.
Sky has already also won the mobile clip rights to all 380 matches, which it will share with News UK, the publisher of the Sun and the Times.
Barney Francis, the Sky Sports managing director, said that the way people were consuming matches was changing. Its figures show that downloads of on demand football content rose by 152% last season on the year before.
“We are giving fans more ways to watch extended highlights, with the content now available on demand in the individual club section so fans can catch up on the action when they want,” said Francis of the new deal.
The contract completes the Premier League’s auction of domestic rights. Once overseas sales are completed before the end of the year, the overall total is likely to top £8.5bn.
In turn, that has led to renewed pressure on the Premier League over issues such as ticket prices and the amount it redistributes to the grassroots.
It has promised to redistribute at least £1bn over the course of the next TV contract, but the majority of that will go to relegated clubs in parachute payments.
The Premier League remains in discussions with the government over grassroots sport and its schools programme, while the issue of ticket prices is likely to come up at next week’s shareholders’ meeting.
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