This evening, the first games in Amazon’s deal for TV rights to two rounds of the Premier League get underway. But Amazon’s coverage ends after next season’s Festive period games, because from the 2025/26 season, they will no longer have live rights.
Amazon, you will recall, have the rights to a midweek round of games in December, and the games played on Boxing Day, and the following couple of days. Getting a pure-play digital TV partner was a major aim of the Premier League when they did their deal with Amazon in 2018. Due to the pandemic, all the Premier League’s UK partners renewed for a further three years at the same price.
And all the time, I’ve questioned the overall value of the Amazon package, since the 20 games are played in the course of a single month, with a number of games taking place simultaneously. All told, that never felt like a sensible marketing proposition for anyone. And at the time, it took Amazon a lot longer than Sky and BT Sports to conclude their deal.
But this time around, things have changed quite a bit, and Amazon is no longer in the picture.
The Premier League reduced the number of packages available from 7 to 5. But the number of fixtures available overall has increased to a minimum of 267 games a season, up from 200 currently.
It does get complicated though, because of those minimums. And it seems likely this time around, that there will be more simultaneous fixtures in some packages. The Premier League has helpfully explained the five packages available:
Package A
Total matches: 52 (18 second picks; 14 fourth picks; all 20 matches as part of 4th and 5th midweek rounds)
Matches per club: maximum six; minimum one
Primary kick-off time: 32 matches at Saturday 12.30
Package B
Total matches: 50* (14 first picks; 18 fifth picks; approximately 6-10 rescheduled matches but not at Sunday 14.00; all 10 matches as part of 3rd midweek round)
Matches per club: maximum six; minimum one
Primary kick-off time: 32 matches at Saturday 17.30
Package C
Total matches: 66* (14 second picks; 18 fourth picks; 30-38 rescheduled matches at Sunday 14.00)
Matches per club: maximum five; minimum one
Primary kick-off time: 32 matches at Sunday 14.00
Package D
Total matches: 44* (18 first picks; 13 third picks; up to two Round 37; all 10 Final Round)
Matches per club: maximum five; minimum one
Kick-off times: 32 matches at Sunday 16.30
Package E
Total matches: 58 (18 third picks; 14 fifth picks; all 20 matches as part of 1st and 2nd midweek rounds; six additional matches)
Matches per club: maximum five; minimum one
Kick-off times: 32 matches on Monday/Friday evenings
*approximate number of matches based upon ranges detailed above
TNT Sports (previously known as BT Sports) has won Package A, which is broadly speaking, the package they currently have in addition to two rounds of midweek games which I think would fall between January and April. In total, that’s 52 fixtures. I confess that I hadn’t realised that the Saturday 12:30 package doesn’t contain any first picks of each round.
And Sky has won the rest, totalling a minimum of 215 games.
Package B is primarily the Saturday 17:30 slot, and includes 14 first picks out of the 50 games. It also includes a midweek round. Package C is the Sunday 14:00 slot and has 66 fixtures including 14 second picks. Package D is the Sunday 16:30 kick-off and has 44 matches including 18 first picks. It also includes every game in the final round of fixtures which is played on a Sunday. Package E has 58 fixtures including all 20 fixtures in the first two midweek rounds – which may be akin to what Amazon has. This also includes Monday and Friday evening games.
What all this means is that many of the additional televised games are not in new timeslots, but will see more games played simultaneously. That does at least avoid things like Sunday evening games, which would prove hard for fans to get home from. I suspect that some weeks, particularly when European competitions underway, that Saturday 3pm fixtures will be few and far between however.
The overall deal sees the Premier League collect £6.7bn over four years, which they say represents a 4% increase over the current deal, which of course was flat last time around.
In the scheme of things, that probably represents a good result for the UK rights. In the current economy, you have to think that any kind of increase is good.
What is interesting is the fact that widely touted players like DAZN did not seem to get a look-in. Things seem to be looking up
While Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is having to save cash, they couldn’t ditch things entirely via their TNT Sports vehicle, so they maintain some Premier League rights. For Sky, you suspect the rights are more critical, since TNT does at least have Champions’ League rights. Sky needs a reason for people to maintain one of their packages whether it’s via satellite or streaming. I’m still curious to see if WBD does something with Max in the UK when their output deal ends with Sky.
I’m not surprised that Apple hasn’t won rights. They do things their own way, and random Premier League packages wouldn’t be enough. They’re probably looking at the deal they have with MLS in the US as the model for them.
The BBC will be pleased to maintain Match of the Day rights, and with their upcoming Champions’ League highlights rights, provide good access to football for all.
Unrelated to all of the above, it’s interesting to see that Amazon have added on-screen graphics to show how many substitutes are available to each time. The graphics are very similar to those use in NFL coverage to show how many timeouts a team has remaining. That may be genuinely useful. At least, unlike Sky, you’re not expected to know club crests! While those of the bigger clubs are well known, I defy non-fans to tell me what, say Luton or Burnley’s crest looks like without help.
And speaking of the NFL, Amazon hasn’t tried to duplicate some of the innovation they were offering in the US during their Black Friday NFL game. In the US, Amazon paid $100m for a game on Black Friday afternoon. However most interestingly, they used it to run limited deals that were announced live during the coverage. In other words, viewers were pointed towards a short-term offer almost in the same way that QVC incentivises people to buy now while stocks remain. UK viewers are largely seeing a regular set of ads from what I can tell.