The Premier League is aiming to stream its matches on a Netflix-style OTT platform, new chief executive Richard Masters has revealed.
The league is looking to bypass its usual rights deals to sell coverage directly to consumers – as predicted by tech and media analyst Paolo Pescatore in Broadcast Sport last year.
Masters divulged that the organisation had been ready to try this during the last bidding process – for the 2019-2022 seasons. “During the last process we spent quite a lot of time and invested a lot of recourse in building out our expertise and capacity in ‘direct consumer’,” he said. “We considered whether it would be the right time to test a few markets and decided not to. But we are going to continue for the planning phase in the next commercial term to build out those capabilities.”
He continued: “We were ready last time and we will be ready next time should the opportunity arise.”
The next bidding process will be for the 2022-25 seasons.
With the UK market currently dominated by Sky Sports and BT Sport, despite the recent addition of Amazon Prime, it is likely that any direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform would be created for overseas markets.
The Premier League brings in £1.4 billion of its £3.1 billion TV rights income from foreign buyers, but they could increase this if they were to remove the ‘middleman’ broadcasters.
However, it is unclear if this will be realised in the near future. Masters explained: “I’m not saying it will happen in the next cycle or when it will happen but eventually the Premier League will move to a mix of direct consumer and media rights sales. It is impossible to say when that will be.”
Domestic TV rights fell in value from £5.4 billion to £5 billion for 2019-2022, but the rise in value of overseas rights more than covered for this. The Premier League could now be looking to maximise its income in this area, through further negotiations with broadcasters as well as plans to release their own platform.
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