The full market value of the upcoming Premier League football rights tender has been predicted to surpass the £10 billion mark.
According to Ampere Analysis, the three-year deal – starting from the 2019/20 season – will be worth around £10.9 billion.
The total global cost of the previous rights deal was £7.37 billion. That agreement – announced in February 2015 – saw Sky and BT pay out £5.136 billion, a combined 70 per cent increase on the previous deal.
However, Ampere predicts it will not be the pay-TV giants who have a significant impact on the total figure. It expects the next deal to be worth somewhere between £5.5 billion and £5.9 billion, representing a nine to 15 per cent increase on the previous agreement.
The analyst sees the largest growth being driven by new entrants pushing up the international rights valuations, predicting a 58 per cent increase to £5.05 billion.
Ampere regards Amazon as “a wildcard changing the face of the competitive bidding process”, and a key reason as to why it expects international rights inflation to exceed that of the UK.
However, it expects any Amazon bid for UK rights would be limited to one of the smaller packages.
“Unlike the bidding for the 2017 to 2019 rights, life is now very much less certain. What has changed is the very real threat that Amazon will look to take at least some of the UK and later on, international rights,” said Ampere Analysis research director Guy Bisson.
“At the same time, domestically, Sky and BT’s appetite to increase spend in line with the previous rates of inflation may have waned. The inflationary pressure will be focused on international rights and will be driven by the threat from Amazon and other potential new entrants.”
