The Premier League has concluded deals with Sky Sports and TNT Sports for five UK live packages and with BBC Sport for the free-to-air highlights package, aka Match of the Day.
All three agreements will cover the four-year period starting Season 2025/26 and are the largest sports media rights deals ever concluded in the UK.
Sky Sports has been awarded live rights packages B, C, D and E, covering a minimum of 215 live matches per season, which will include more than 140 matches played at weekends, evening matches on Fridays and Mondays, and full coverage of three midweek match rounds. For the first time, Sky Sports will also broadcast all 10 matches on the final day of each season.
TNT Sports has been awarded live rights package A, covering 52 live matches per season, including exclusive coverage of matches played on Saturdays at 12.30pm and full coverage of two midweek match rounds.
For the first time in the UK, all matches taking place outside of the Saturday 3pm “closed period”, including those displaced to Sunday 2pm because of club participation in European competitions, will be broadcast live.
BBC Sport has been awarded highlights rights for all 380 Premier League matches each season, with additional digital rights for the BBC’s online platforms. The agreement will see BBC Match of the Day continue to bring Premier League action to millions of viewers each week, alongside a full range of additional programming, from its base at MediaCityUK’s dock10.
The announced agreements will deliver a total of £6.7billion in revenue across the four-year period, inclusive of a four per cent increase in live rights value compared to the previous process.
Richard Masters, Premier League chief executive, 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.
“As longstanding and valued partners, Sky Sports and TNT Sports are renowned for consistently delivering world-class coverage and programming. We have enjoyed record audiences and attendances in recent seasons, and we know that their continued innovation will drive more people to watch and follow the Premier League.
“We are also extremely pleased to extend our partnership with BBC Sport, which will continue to bring weekly highlights of all Premier League matches to the widest possible audience in the UK. Match of the Day has been an institution for generations of football fans in this country and remains incredibly popular with fans of all ages.”
Barbara Slater, director, BBC Sport, said: “Match Of The Day remains enduringly popular with audiences and this new agreement with the Premier League is brilliant news for football fans all over the UK.
“For almost 60 years it has been the UK’s most discussed football programme, delivering a complete digest of the weekend’s action and this enhanced deal with more digital content means we can tell the story of the Premier League every day across BBC Sport platforms.”
Dana Strong, group chief executive of Sky, added: “This is a fantastic result for Sky customers, who will see a significant increase in the number of matches from the most iconic league in the world.
“We are proud of our long history with the Premier League and look forward to delivering more engagement, entertainment and innovation to the end of the decade.”
Of note in the latest round of PL rights awards is the lack of Amazon, which had screened matches over the Christmas period under the previous round, as well as no successful bid from Leeds and London HQ’d streamer DAZN, which had been hotly tipped to make an audacious bid to shake up Premier League broadcasting this time around.
The Amazon omission in particular could play havoc with at least one journalist’s decade+ habit of predicting that streamers will never truly compete with linear TV until they can hold their in the live event TV sphere, although a sudden bankruptcy for Jeff Bezos in Autumn 2025 could yet prove me correct.
