Sky Sports have retained a stranglehold on Premier League broadcasting…
Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has stepped in to defend the Premier League as a British institution following a record breaking deal to sell the league’s broadcasting rights for £5.136 billion across three years, reports the Daily Mail.
SEE MORE:
Sky Share Prices Plummet After Colossal £5.14bn Premier League TV Deal
IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn: No Time For Sex Parties When I’m Saving The World
Louis Van Gaal’s Man United Tactics Labelled As A Laughing Stock By Former Dutch International
It is thought added competition from BT Sport has been part of the reason for the hiked price as Sky Sports scooped five of the seven available for a cost of £4.2 billion, while the remaining two went to the telecom giant for a comparatively miserly £960 million. The new deal will net the Premier League £113,000 per minute in domestic television revenue.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Scudamore believes the new deal, which is a 71% increase on the previous one, is a success, and extolled the virtues of the top division, claiming it was as loved across the globe as the Royal Family and BBC.
“To my core, I believe this is a success story,” said the Premier League chief. “And I believe it’s a great UK export, it attracts a whole lot of positive feelings about the UK.
‘If you go and do any international survey, things like the Premier League, the BBC, the Queen: they are things that people feel are good about the UK.
“Our own Prime Minister is quite happy to travel the world and talk about what a good thing the Premier League is.
“And we’re proud that our clubs and the league is looked at in that way.
“If you had your house and you were about to sell it tomorrow you would probably want to sell it for as much as someone was willing to pay for it.
“We have an asset here, clearly it’s an asset that people value, and we’ve marketed it in a way and put it up for sale and people have paid what they’ve paid for it.”
For their money, Sky have reclaimed the Saturday lunchtime kick-off, while BT have paid for the rights to Saturday night football instead.
The Premier League are likely to spend the majority of 2015 selling international broadcasting rights with overall revenue potentially spiralling over £8 billion.
Scudamore has admitted that top division bosses were worried at the time of the last broadcasting deal that such a rise in revenue is likely to be unsustainable. For now, at least, there seems to be nothing standing in the way of the Premier League as they are bankrolled by broadcasting giants and run the risk of having their wealth spiral out of control.