Apple is considering a bid for the rights to stream the English Premier League in the United Kingdom, among other lower league matches run by the English Football League, according to a Bloomberg report citing "people familiar with the situation." From the report:

The rights under consideration would allow Apple to show Premier League games in the UK, as well as lower league matches run by the English Football League, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

If Apple went ahead with the plan, it would become the fourth major player in contention to purchase domestic broadcasting rights for top-flight soccer (or football, as it's called outside North America).

That would likely see a marked increase in the current £5.1 billion ($6.23 billion) valuation for domestic EPL rights, which operates on a three-year renewal cycle. Tender rights are currently being reviewed, with existing rights for the current three-year period set to expire in 2025.

Recent years have seen bidding wars play out between Sky Sports, BT Sport, and Amazon Prime Video, with Sky Sports often being the dominant player, although Amazon has been increasingly wielding its bidding power in recent years. Packaging terms ensure that no one broadcaster gains rights to all English Premier League matches, so any Apple deal for EPL broadcasting rights would necessarily fall short of the exclusivity deal the company successfully negotiated with MLS.

Apple has been pursuing sports content in an effort to attract new viewers to the Apple TV+ streaming service. The company has signed deals with Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer, which is currently available on Apple TV+ via an MLS Season Pass priced at $14.99 per month or $99 per season. Apple has also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring an NBA streaming package.

Apple TV+ is also the home of hit sports comedy drama "Ted Lasso," in which an American college football coach is hired to coach an English soccer team.

Article Link: Bloomberg: Apple Considering Bid for English Premier League Streaming Rights in the UK

This is great and all but what everyone really wants is the Premier League to provide one service that has all the games.

All this does is potentially add yet another subscription to proceedings which isn’t needed.

BMox81 said:

This is great and all but what everyone really wants is the Premier League to provide one service that has all the games.

All this does is potentially add yet another subscription to proceedings which isn’t needed.

that's deemed "anti competitive" though, which is why the EPL aren't allowed to have just 1 provider holding all the rights.

of course, it's a flawed system though.
it works fine if someone is only interested in watching a couple of games, which means they can subscribe to 1 package showing the lowest games, however if someone wants to watch all the games they, at the moment, have to subscribe to 3 different providers (Sky, BT and Amazon).

i'm sure the EPL would love to be able to sell 100% of the rights to just 1 provider, it would drive the price up and make for a good auction, but they aren't allowed it.

chenks said:

that's deemed "anti competitive" though, which is why the EPL aren't allowed to have just 1 provider holding all the rights.

of course, it's a flawed system though.
it works fine if someone is only interested in watching a couple of games, which means they can subscribe to 1 package showing the lowest games, however if someone wants to watch all the games they, at the moment, have to subscribe to 3 different providers (Sky, BT and Amazon).

i'm sure the EPL would love to be able to sell 100% of the rights to just 1 provider, it would drive the price up and make for a good auction, but they aren't allowed it.

Click to expand...

There isn’t anything anti-competitive in the Premier League creating their own service. It’s their content after all.

The current format makes it so that no one service can have all the games and is why as you said, we have the three services showing the games. And of course the PL like this as it drives up the cost of the packages.

And is also why many people go down the IPTV route or stream the games illegally.

BMox81 said:

There isn’t anything anti-competitive in the Premier League creating their own service. It’s their content after all.

The current format makes it so that no one service can have all the games and is why as you said, we have the three services showing the games. And of course the PL like this as it drives up the cost of the packages.

And is also why many people go down the IPTV route or stream the games illegally.

the regulator deems it anti-competitive, which is why, at the moment, 1 provider is not allowed to own all the rights.

not sure there would be any benefit to EPL running their own service, as they would then take on the cost of having of running the service, which i can't imaging being that desirable.

at the moment they have on running costs and get money from whoever wants to show the games.

Hopefully this opens up the possibility of all games to be streamed legally. The amount of games that you aren't able to watch live in the UK, mainly due to the archaic 3pm black out, is ridiculous.

Wasn’t/isn’t Apple also looking at Formula 1 or am I making that up?

BMox81 said:

This is great and all but what everyone really wants is the Premier League to provide one service that has all the games.

All this does is potentially add yet another subscription to proceedings which isn’t needed.

If they cared about the fans, that's what they would do.....unfortunately the don't 😏

4odomi said:

If they cared about the fans

who is the "they" you are referring to?

Can't see this happening. Couple of games over specific periods like amazon maybe but cant see this leaving sky.

I dont like SKY but Apples platform is still far to niche in the UK compared to Skys offering.

I see there are very interesting month…..EPL UK…..German Bundesliga…..NBA….PAC 12…Formula One.
Or maybe a buy of the WWE.

chenks said:

that's deemed "anti competitive" though, which is why the EPL aren't allowed to have just 1 provider holding all the rights.

of course, it's a flawed system though.
it works fine if someone is only interested in watching a couple of games, which means they can subscribe to 1 package showing the lowest games, however if someone wants to watch all the games they, at the moment, have to subscribe to 3 different providers (Sky, BT and Amazon).

i'm sure the EPL would love to be able to sell 100% of the rights to just 1 provider, it would drive the price up and make for a good auction, but they aren't allowed it.

Click to expand...

IIRC it was the EU that mandated one supplier - so there's no need now to obey that rule - but I think it has tended to drive up the price of the rights so the PL are quite happy for this to continue. Screws the consumer though. Hopefully we will eventually transition to all games being available and the ridiculous Saturday 15:00 rule being abandoned. It isn't the 1950s anymore...

Did they hear it from their friend's hairdresser whose brother-in-law works in an Apple store?

Great: an injection of even more money into an already obscenely wealthy sport.

tomscott1988 said:

Can't see this happening. Couple of games over specific periods like amazon maybe but cant see this leaving sky.

I dont like SKY but Apples platform is still far to niche in the UK compared to Skys offering.

Isn't that the point though… Apple want to take their TV platform from 'niche' to something more 'mainstream' with initiatives like this.

tomscott1988 said:

I dont like SKY but Apples platform is still far to niche in the UK compared to Skys offering.

That would change in a hurry if Apple acquired a few of the PL packages

I don’t know many football fans who are desperate to keep paying Sky up to £100 a month. Do you?

orbital~debris said:

Isn't that the point though… Apple want to take their TV platform from 'niche' to something more 'mainstream' with initiatives like this.

do they want to spend billions on trying to get all the rights though? (which they won't)
the UK rights alone is billions, so add US and other territories rights to that and is that sort of investment something they are willing to shell out on just to get people to buy an appletv?

I thought they had no money and were cutting back ??

chenks said:

that's deemed "anti competitive" though, which is why the EPL aren't allowed to have just 1 provider holding all the rights.

of course, it's a flawed system though.
it works fine if someone is only interested in watching a couple of games, which means they can subscribe to 1 package showing the lowest games, however if someone wants to watch all the games they, at the moment, have to subscribe to 3 different providers (Sky, BT and Amazon).

I wonder what % subscribe to two services and what % to 3? That would determine the potential subscriber base at various price points.

chenks said:

i'm sure the EPL would love to be able to sell 100% of the rights to just 1 provider, it would drive the price up and make for a good auction, but they aren't allowed it.

I’m guessing what they get from 3 is more than what they’d get from 1 rights holder.

Each holder knows their numbers, and would take a guess on how many they would add if they had all the rights. The problem is not all of the current subscribers in each group would likely be willing to pay, say 2-3x as much for a package o it makes no sense to bid too much. Some subscribers may be more interested in games in one package vs another, watch games they don’t get in places besides their home, etc., and so a price increase may result in a loss of some current subscribers as well.

I suspect if the EPL thought they could get more they’d find a way to sell exclusive rights.

chenks said:

do they want to spend billions on trying to get all the rights though? (which they won't)
the UK rights alone is billions, so add US and other territories rights to that and is that sort of investment something they are willing to shell out on just to get people to buy an appletv?

I doubt they are interested in US rights unless they are cheap - not that much of a market for the EPL. NBC only paid 2.7 billion for 6 years. That’s a lot less than what’s paid for the rights to the Big Ten’s (major US college conference) football and basketball rights at 1.2 billion/year for 7 years.

It’s weird but it appear the PL clubs themselves are in favour of the 3pm ban. Which is really annoying.

I would actually pay more to guarantee I can watch all my clubs games as I don’t go to the stadium often if at all.

It’s very hard to get a ticket for a home match as most clubs have season ticket allocations that are sold out. So it just feels like they are leaving a lot of money on the table by not allowing uk viewers to watch at 3pm. It doesn’t make sense anymore. It drives people to illegal streams. I’d happily pay a few pounds to watch the 3pm game. Which would be more revenue I’d imagine than they get from season tickets as there are hundreds of thousands that watch illegal streams.

jlc1978 said:

I wonder what % subscribe to two services and what % to 3? That would determine the potential subscriber base at various price points.

i would say a majority subscribe to both Sky and BT (BT also has all the rights to European competitions), but few subscribe to Amazon specifically for the limited games they show

Duncan-UK said:

IIRC it was the EU that mandated one supplier - so there's no need now to obey that rule - but I think it has tended to drive up the price of the rights so the PL are quite happy for this to continue. Screws the consumer though. Hopefully we will eventually transition to all games being available and the ridiculous Saturday 15:00 rule being abandoned. It isn't the 1950s anymore...

Originally i wrote it cant be the case, but on checking it was. Why did the EU get involved in this, and not in any other European League's tv rights?

i cant think of any european country which has such a convoluted rights split.
the only reason Portuguese games are split are that Benfica choose to show their own games, everything else is SportTV. In i think 2027, it will go back to collective selling and it will almost certainly mean all games are on SportTV.


and when you think about it, its a very British way of dealing with it. take a situation which isnt broken, announce you are going to introduce competition which will make it better for the consumers, and make it much worse for them but companies make more money. What would promote competition would be to ban them from selling exclusive rights to anything, meaning two different companies could buy the rights for the same games or the whole package.

jlc1978 said:

I’m guessing what they get from 3 is more than what they’d get from 1 rights holder.

Each holder knows their numbers, and would take a guess on how many they would add if they had all the rights. The problem is not all of the current subscribers in each group would likely be willing to pay, say 2-3x as much for a package o it makes no sense to bid too much. Some subscribers may be more interested in games in one package vs another, watch games they don’t get in places besides their home, etc., and so a price increase may result in a loss of some current subscribers as well.

I suspect if the EPL thought they could get more they’d find a way to sell exclusive rights.

Click to expand...

the reality is that if it was allowed to go to just 1 provider then it only ever be Sky that would get them, there is currently no other provider that could invest the amount needed. and sky need it more than anyone else as without EPL they don't really have much of a business model, the sports subscription subsidises the rest of the business.

the second provider has changed so many times as it's just not profitable enough for what they get. we've had at least 4 (i think) companies try and decide it wasn't worth it, even ESPN couldn't make the numbers work and bailed.

threesixty360 said:

It’s weird but it appear the PL clubs themselves are in favour of the 3pm ban. Which is really annoying.

I would actually pay more to guarantee I can watch all my clubs games as I don’t go to the stadium often if at all.

It’s very hard to get a ticket for a home match as most clubs have season ticket allocations that are sold out. So it just feels like they are leaving a lot of money on the table by not allowing uk viewers to watch at 3pm. It doesn’t make sense anymore. It drives people to illegal streams. I’d happily pay a few pounds to watch the 3pm game. Which would be more revenue I’d imagine than they get from season tickets as there are hundreds of thousands that watch illegal streams.

Click to expand...

What is the 3pm blackout? I remember the FA cup always used to be at 3pm, but it's long since moved towards the evening at 5:30ish?

Stella said:

What is the 3pm blackout? I remember the FA cup always used to be at 3pm, but it's long since moved towards the evening at 5:30ish?

no live football is allowed to be broadcast on UK tv (no matter what country the game is from) during 3pm - 5pm on a saturday. there are exceptions like cup finals but those tend not to be on a 3pm on a saturday any more