Apple Interested in Bidding for English Premier League Streaming Rights?

MacRumors · Jan 3, 2012

Apple is considering bidding for the rights to stream English Premier League (EPL) football matches, according to the Daily Mail. The EPL is the top football league in England, and one of the premiere football leagues in the world and the bidding for the television rights is expected to generate billions of dollars in revenue for the teams and the league.

The Premier League is seen as the type of premium content that will help establish Apple TV in the UK and boost iPad sales, while the iTunes subscription service infrastructure is already in place.

The involvement of Apple - and their great multimedia rivals Google are also expected to make similar soundings - would give the PL a hugely competitive market at a time when the price of other TV sports rights are in decline.

The Daily Mail notes that Sky, the current holder of the Premier League broadcast license, ESPN, and Al Jazeera are also expected to bid on the rights.

Thanks Dean!

Article Link: Apple Interested in Bidding for English Premier League Streaming Rights?

TheJing · Jan 3, 2012

Free streams are where it's at.

WiLLGT09 · Jan 3, 2012

If Apple does get streaming rights, us EPL fans in the US better get access.

pknz · Jan 3, 2012

Daily Fail.

morty192 · Jan 3, 2012

Can't see $KY letting this happen. If Apple win this and if it includes 3pm kick offs this would be a massive addition to any portfolio for any media company so it has to be SKY or else they lose ALOT of customers with availability of HD and 3d streams of potentially every game.

HishamAkhtar · Jan 3, 2012

Absolutely unreal. Not sure Murdoch would let go off the EPL without a fight though.

Perhaps they could go for Formula 1 as well?

whawhat · Jan 3, 2012

A lot of people would be interested in paying the $10-$15 a month fee to be able to stream live matches thru Apple TV and other devices legally.

steviem · Jan 3, 2012

This would be ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

I would pay $10/month to see every Saints game next season - as they will be back in the top flight then

Hopefully it would happen and lead the way for the NFL to join and for them to quit these stupid blackout rules.

ajphares · Jan 3, 2012

steviem said:
This would be ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

I would pay $10/month to see every Saints game next season - as they will be back in the top flight then

Hopefully it would happen and lead the way for the NFL to join and for them to quit these stupid blackout rules.

This article is about football, not american football

Also, the Saints are one of the 3-4 best teams this year.

daveishere · Jan 3, 2012

can't see this happening to be honest, apple would have to take a big chunk out of their $80b cash reserve to take the rights off Sky.

Also, bearing in mind i can get all Sky Sports channels and therefore a lot of EPL games on Sky Go (an iPad/iPhone app) I cant see what else apple can offer?

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ajphares said:
This article is about football, not american football

Also, the Saints are one of the 3-4 best teams this year.

I think he's talking about Southhampton mate, an English championship side looking for promotion to the EPL next season.

SPEEDwithJJ · Jan 3, 2012

WiLLGT09 said:
If Apple does get streaming rights, us EPL fans in the US better get access.

+1 to that!

davie18 · Jan 3, 2012

Stopped believing any of it was true when I saw the source was the daily fail.

I hope it's BS too, sky do a great job of broadcasting the games. Apple would need to realise what they'd be up against as they could anger millions of people very quickly if they didn't do a very good job with it, at a reasonably good price.

ChristianVirtual · Jan 3, 2012

I doubt ... First I would assume they would go with NBA or NFL. Plus I doubt that the customer base would be big enough to justify a huge pile of $$$ to be used for that.

ajphares · Jan 3, 2012

daveishere said:
can't see this happening to be honest, apple would have to take a big chunk out of their $80b cash reserve to take the rights off Sky.

Also, bearing in mind i can get all Sky Sports channels and therefore a lot of EPL games on Sky Go (an iPad/iPhone app) I cant see what else apple can offer?

----------

I think he's talking about Southhampton mate, an English championship side looking for promotion to the EPL next season.

Ah, I assumed he was talking about american football based on the avatar picture. Apologies!

whawhat · Jan 3, 2012

ajphares said:
This article is about football, not american football

Also, the Saints are one of the 3-4 best teams this year.

He was referring to Southhampton FC, whose nickname is also the Saints. They currently play in the Championship, one division below the Prem.

davie18 · Jan 3, 2012

WiLLGT09 said:
If Apple does get streaming rights, us EPL fans in the US better get access.

But this story is about rights to show EPL games in England, the rights to show them in the US and other countries is a different thing all together.

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steviem said:
This would be ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

I would pay $10/month to see every Saints game next season - as they will be back in the top flight then

Hopefully it would happen and lead the way for the NFL to join and for them to quit these stupid blackout rules.

You don't know what I'd do to pay that much to see all of my team's games (sunderland). We pay something like $30 a month and only get maybe 7 or 8 games a year shown of my team, maybe over 10 sometimes.

scharf10 · Jan 3, 2012

If Apple have plans to release a full TV set with a view to do away with set top boxes etc, this is the type of content they would need to make it work. Sky currently have fantastic HD coverage of the Premiership.

*LTD* · Jan 3, 2012

For a split second I thought they were bidding for an actual team.

davie18 · Jan 3, 2012

I'd just like to make another post though to say that even IF this is true, and apple are interested, which I don't believe, I don't think there is ANY way sky would let it completely go. There is no way apple would end up with rights to all of the games, probably not even half of them.

Losing a lot of the games that they currently have would be a very bad thing for sky, and losing all of them would be a complete and utter disaster.

For anyone in the US who doesn't know, sky is THE satellite TV company in the UK. It has the majority share and probably only has one real competitor in the country. They are obviously a huge player in that market and so there is no way I can see them giving in to losing the TV rights.

Lord Blackadder · Jan 3, 2012

ESPN's EPL coverage in the US is poor. It would be nice if there was more competition for EPL rights here in the states - we might end up with decent coverage.

charlituna · Jan 3, 2012

WiLLGT09 said:
If Apple does get streaming rights, us EPL fans in the US better get access.

don't count on it.

I suspect that this would be like the NFL etc stuff where there's an app and you would subscribe either off a site or IAP for access. And yes it would most likely be UK or European only

pancakedrawer · Jan 3, 2012

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Id say the customer base for EPL would be far greater than any other sporting league by a long shot.

I'd apple stream this for free it could be a huge drawcard for the ATV ecosystem.

rolfbert · Jan 3, 2012

davie18 said:
I'd just like to make another post though to say that even IF this is true, and apple are interested, which I don't believe, I don't think there is ANY way sky would let it completely go. There is no way apple would end up with rights to all of the games, probably not even half of them.

Losing a lot of the games that they currently have would be a very bad thing for sky, and losing all of them would be a complete and utter disaster.

For anyone in the US who doesn't know, sky is THE satellite TV company in the UK. It has the majority share and probably only has one real competitor in the country. They are obviously a huge player in that market and so there is no way I can see them giving in to losing the TV rights.

This article is not about TV rights, it's about streaming rights. That is a difference.

steviem · Jan 3, 2012

ajphares said:
This article is about football, not american football

Also, the Saints are one of the 3-4 best teams this year.

lol, yeah, I was talking about the team nicknamed the Saints since the late 1800s. My NFL team is the Giants by the way, as my avatar suggests...

Sky and the American broadcaster ESPN currently share UK pay-for-view coverage following the £1.78 billion deal for the rights to cover matches between 2010 and 2013. Sky holds five of the six 23-game packages.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...V-rights-battle-Al-Jazeera.html#ixzz1iRnApD9G

I don't know, it's a fairly low amount to outbid them, or at least get sports governing bodies to get better with modern technology.

HiRez · Jan 3, 2012

This is cool, a good use for some of that mountain of cash (which will grow again later this month). If they really want to make a splash, bid on the NFL contract. Yes, it would be insanely expensive, but that's as marquee as it gets and would give them big time clout for prying other contracts away from cable and satellite lock-in (like HBO). If they want, they could sell off rights to others to recoup some costs. I don't think Apple necessarily needs to have exclusive access to premium content, they just want the chance to stream it.

Apple Interested in Bidding for English Premier League Streaming Rights?

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