The new TV deal
Over the the past two years, the substantial TV deal has often been on everyone’s lips, and indeed the funds from it which have been brought in by Premier League clubs both prior to and this season because of the new deal.
In recent weeks it was announced by the Premier League that the newest TV deal had been signed by both BT and Sky for packages A, B, C, D, and E. However, the remaining two being F and G they are still available to be bought by a broadcasting company.
Which if they are bought then the TV deal could surpass the £8 billion mark.
Reports within the media are suggesting that the remaining packages are going to be offered to internet giants including Amazon and Netflix, with the hope that it can spin live football broadcasting in a different way once more.
The Premier League have claimed that there are “multiple bidders” for the remaining packages and said that a digital company could still get the rights to them.
According to The Guardian, the new deal signed between the two massive broadcasting companies, is roughly £500m less than the old TV deal which was a reported £5.13 billion.
The most obvious reason for this is the lack of subscribers paying the likes of BT and Sky to watch the matches, which is indirectly related to illegal streams which has increased massively in recent months.
The difference is approximately a 10% drop since the record TV deal.
This is reflected in Sky’s 2017 annual report. In football, Serie A, Bundesliga and Champions League managed record breaking viewings where as the Premier League views for the year were down from the previous year.
The clubs
Premier League clubs benefit massively from the TV deal, which is partly the reason why transfer fees, recently have gone through the roof!
Including Gylfi Sigurdsson moving to Everton for a reported £50m and most recently Virgil Van Dijk who moved to Liverpool for around £75m.
Transfer fee records have been broken across the board in the top flight with a number of clubs setting new transfer records, including Arsenal and Manchester City.
Because of the revenue that the clubs bring in from the TV money, it allows them to either profit like Liverpool have (£39m) or even renovate the facilities which is evident at Manchester City.
Who is at fault for this?
Partly the TV companies are to blame to blame for this but one of the key issues is, the numerous amount of streams that people find to watch their favourite teams, even when the specific games are not even being broadcast on the regular TV channels.
Streaming is arguably the most ‘efficient' way to watch football nowadays because all you need is a fast enough Wi-Fi connection to run it.
In a survey that was conducted in 2017 shows that approximately a third of those who voted opted for finding a stream over the internet to watch a football match on, coincidentally it was mostly young adults.
The Guardian completed a survey on how everyone watches football, there were mixed opinions and answers but the vast majority said that they stream the football at home.
In 2017, it was announced that Sky’s Premier League viewing figures hit a low, which had outdone any figure from the past seven years. The average viewing for Sky’s live TV channels fell by 14% throughout the 2016-17 season.
There are a number of reasons why the viewing figures have been impacted but streaming was not the only contribution to this. One of the factors is social media. Snapchat, for example, released their new ‘live’ story feature which sometimes involved coverage from a match that was being covered by Sky.
What impact will it have?
With the two remaining packages not being bought by both Sky and BT, it will allow the broadcasting of Premier League football to possibly reach a new level. This in turn could be bad news for the two TV broadcasting giants.
It has already been shown recently that the coverage of football has gone online thanks to the upgrade in technology and Wi-Fi connections.
One of these is Now TV. This is interesting because the firm is actually owned by Sky UK. There are reasons why Now TV would be more efficient, one of those is you don’t necessarily need to be a Sky customer to be able to watch the content that they air.
It also allows the subscriber to purchase a day pass if they only want to watch a specific event which is an excellent USP, the fact that they don’t have to sign up for the month. The way that they catch the customer is that the monthly pass automatically renews if it is not cancelled, which is where most fall down.
So in that respect, Sky would not lose out at all with them effectively owning Now TV, whereas BT completely lose out on this occasion which could potentially put them further behind their closest competitor (at the moment).
Facebook, Amazon and even Netflix could get an opportunity to sign a deal with the Premier League and if that happens it could be the start of a new chapter for live football.
For Amazon - which previously secured the UK rights for broadcasting the tennis US Open, it would be a win-win situation for the electronics commerce giant.