BT Sport and Sky to pay £5.1bn to share Premier League

BT Sport and Sky are set to pay the Premier League £5.136bn to share live TV rights for three seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Sky won the lion’s share, taking five of the seven packages of matches made available, whilst BT won the remaining two.

Sky will broadcast 126 live Premier League matches a season from 2016-17 to 2018-19, including the first Friday night games, and the two Sunday packages.

Sky will pay £1,392 million per annum for each of the three years of the new agreement, representing an 83% increase over the cost of the existing contract.

BT Sport will broadcast 42 games, paying £320m per season compared with £246m per season at present. On a per game basis, this equates to £7.6m per game, an increase of 18 per cent.

“The big news is that the total prices paid broke £5bn to hit £5.136bn, a jump of more than 70% on the same package last time around and a new record,” said Joshua Raymond, senior market analyst at Cityindex.

“This is a huge jump and shows the huge competition BT posed in forcing Sky to bid to new heights. Sky had the most to risk with this TV deal and has been forced to pay over the odds to secure prime packages including the Sunday lunchtime kick offs, which typically attracts the highest viewing audience.”

Raymond said he expects Sky shareholders to react warmly to the latest victory but in the medium term, there has to be a deeper concern on the spiralling prices paid by broadcasters.