The Premier League TV rights will stay in the hands of Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime and BBC Sport for another three years with the contract now running to 2025 for the four broadcasters.
The ‘Rollover’ deal worth £4.7bn which was agreed in 2018 was recently approved by the government and £100m on top of the £420m already promised will be given to EFL clubs during the next four years.
The extra funding will be available to more than 1000 clubs in the National League system, women’s and girls’ football, the football foundation and EFL League One and League Two clubs.
The deal is a 10% drop in value but if the planned auction had gone ahead clubs feared that it would’ve gone for even less further dropping the value of the rights.
A Premier League spokesman said “In light of the damaging impact of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the English football pyramid, the Premier League was able to demonstrate to Government exceptional and compelling reasons for the Exclusion Order”.
With Sky Sports getting 128 games to broadcast, BT Sport owning the rights to 52 games, Amazon getting 20 games and BBC getting the highlights for programmes such as Match Of The Day nearly half of Premier League games will not be broadcast live on one of these four platforms.
Due to lockdown all matches have been broadcasted live and after commotion about pay-per-view matches brought in by Sky and BT it will beg the question of piracy as fans will be used to having every game at their fingertips whenever they want it.
BT Sport also confirmed that teams who played in the Champions League on a Wednesday night will no longer have to play on a Saturday at 12:30.
This decision comes after many managers, most notably Jurgen Klopp as well as fans complained that the players weren’t getting enough rest and the Wednesday evening combined with the Saturday early-kick off caused injuries.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said: “We would like to express our gratitude to our broadcast partners for their continued commitment to the Premier League and support for the football pyramid.
“Covid-19 has had a significant impact on football, and renewals with our UK broadcast partners will reduce uncertainty, generate stability and promote confidence within the football pyramid.”
