Premier League TV rights

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Premier League TV rights: Amazon to show 20 matches a season from 2019-2022

The current broadcast deal from 2016 to 2019 is worth £5.14bn to the Premier League clubs

Amazon will show 20 Premier League matches a season for three years from 2019, after winning one of the final two broadcast packages.

The online streaming service has won the rights to show every game from the first round of midweek fixtures in December and all 10 matches on Boxing Day as part of the three-year deal.

The matches will be available free to Amazon Prime's UK members.

The other unsold package of 20 games was bought by BT Sport for £90m.

That takes their total number of games to 52 per season, while a further 112 will be shown by Sky Sports, including prime-time Saturday night fixtures.

Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore described Amazon as an "exciting new partner".

The new deals mark the first time a full round of matches will be shown live in the UK.

How can I watch these games on Amazon?
You will need a Prime membership, which costs £79 a year or £7.99 a month.

In addition to live action, there will also be weekly highlights of all Premier League games throughout the season, although it has not been announced when that will be broadcast.

Prime can be streamed on any Smart TV, mobile device or through an Amazon Fire TV Stick.

Amazon, which started as an online retailer, already broadcasts the US Open tennis, ATP World Tour Tennis events and NFL games.

Who has won what?
The Premier League offered 200 live matches a season to broadcasters, an increase from the 168 available in 2015.

Other changes for the 2019-2022 deal include eight individual games being shown live in a 'prime-time' Saturday night slot, three complete rounds of 10 midweek matches all shown live, and one set of bank holiday games - not known to be Boxing Day.

The broadcasters bid on seven packages of fixtures and in February, Sky Sports paid £3.58bn for four of those, while BT Sport spent £885m on another.

BT initially said it had paid £90m for its final package, taking their total spend to £975m over three seasons, though that information was later removed from its website.

That would take the total value of the rights to £4.55bn, with Amazon yet to announce how much it has paid.

The Premier League's last deal, agreed in 2015 and running until 2019, was worth £5.14bn.

What are the packages?

Package A - won by BT	32 matches on Saturdays at 12:30
Package B - won by Sky Sports	32 matches on Saturdays at 17:30
Package C - won by Sky Sports	24 matches on Sundays at 14:00 and eight matches on Saturdays at 19:45
Package D - won by Sky Sports	32 matches on Sundays at 16:30
Package E - won by Sky Sports	24 matches on Mondays at 20:00 or Fridays at 19:30/20:00 and eight matches on Sundays at 14:00
Package F - won by Amazon	10 matches from one Bank Holiday and all 10 from the Boxing Day fixture programme
Package G - won by BT	20 matches from two midweek fixture programmes

   
Premier League clubs have also agreed a new deal over sharing revenue from international broadcast deals, which will see any future increases divided according to league position.

Revenue is currently shared equally among the 20 clubs, but the bigger clubs had been pushing for a greater share of the money, arguing they are the main attraction for foreign viewers.

'Most internet companies didn't take bait' - analysis

BBC sports news correspondent Richard Conway

These two remaining packages of rights were specifically designed to appeal to the internet giants such as Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Facebook and Google as online streaming continues to rise in popularity. The only problem is that most of those companies failed to take the Premier League's bait.

Now, some four months on and following extended negotiations, a deal has been struck with Amazon and BT Sport. However, the entire auction has fallen short of the Premier League's hopes on revenue.

Rob Wilson, football finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University

It makes complete sense for one of the online streaming services to pick up a Premier League package. The infrastructure and market potential needs testing and this gives Amazon an early mover advantage. They can test the concept at a lower cost to see what audiences they can generate.

For customers it means an additional subscription should they want to consume everything. The Sky, BT stranglehold was always going to break up with so many packages being offered so customers now face three subscriptions to pay for.

Will it spread the existing market more thinly? That remains to be seen. Sky, in particular, will be watching their subscription numbers closely.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44396151