Premier League TV Deal 2025-29

Know Your Rights

The Premier League has concluded the sale of its domestic TV rights for the 2025-29 cycle in what was described as the largest sports media rights deal ever concluded in the UK.

Chief Executive, Richard Masters, said, “We are delighted to announce new deals with Sky Sports and TNT Sports that will extend our partnership for a further four years and see more Premier League matches than ever before shown live from 2025/26 onwards.”

So the Premier League has basically renewed agreements with its trusted broadcast partners, as BBC Sports retained the free-to-air highlights package, so “Match of the Day” is safe.

Deal Value

The Premier League said that the new agreements would deliver a total of £6.7 bln in revenue across the four-year period, inclusive of a 4% increase in live rights value compared to the previous process.

Eagle-eyed observers will have noticed that the new deal has been extended from the usual three-year cycle to four years. The rationale for this change is to increase revenues in a challenging rights market and give greater certainty to both clubs and broadcast partners.

Domestic Rights Trend

The new deal was the first time that domestic TV rights had increased for a while, as the cost had decreased by 8% in the 2019-22 cycle from £5.3 bln to £4.9 bln before being rolled over in the current 2022-25 cycle, largely due to the COVID pandemic.

However, the huge £6.7 bln headline figure was a little misleading, as this covered a longer period of four years. If we were to pro-rate this to the customary three years, it would be worth “only” £5.1 bln, though that would still be 3% higher than the current £4.9 bln.

The total domestic deal includes £6.4 bln for live rights plus another £300m for the BBC highlights package, which was unchanged at £75m a year. The live rights have increased by 4% from £4.7 bln to a pro-rated £4.8 bln.

The new deal is pretty good, albeit not a patch on the glory days when the Premier League enjoyed exponential growth, rising by 64% (£1.2 bln) to £3.2 bln in 2013-16, then another 67% (£2.2 bln) in the following 2106-19 cycle.

On the other hand, as the infamous investment guru Jim Slater once said, “Elephants don’t gallop.”