Good to hear about this. Looks like Apple is trying to get rights to major sporting events across the world.
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Bloomberg: Apple Considering Bid for English Premier League Streaming Rights in the UK
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they have just put the price up. it was £15 yesterday on the sky website.
however, at no point did it state you can get it on its own, simply that it cost that to get just F1.
comparing it to F1 TV is a flawed comparison, as to use F1 TV you also need to pay for other services as well (internet access etc).
Not sure how this works for Apple, they’d want world wide rights like they purchased MLS broadcast rights for. People thinking that Apple might snatch the package that Amazon U.K. specifically currently own overlook the point that (for example) French resident Apple TV subscribers wouldn’t be able to view that.
The packages that have previously been described for sky, BT sport, and amazon are specific to U.K. and other broadcasters around the world have their own deals.
As mentioned the 3-5pm Saturday blackout is peculiar to the U.K. as other broadcaster territories around the world can choose to show all 380 games if they wish.
Imagine if this was somehow possible and apple U.K. users were treated to a premier league package (if for example amazon U.K. backed out of theirs at renewal time), how do you square the fact that Apple TV plus allows you to watch a certain premier league game if you’re in the U.K. but not if you’re in the US or France? Would they need to up the price of the U.K. Apple TV sub to cover it?
It would mean a VPN as apple would need to geo lock their service.
Apple’s strategy to me makes more sense if they did deals like the MLS one - highly lucrative world wide rights - but that only really works for relatively cheap sports they can grab world rights to.
For example, would it be cheap to grab the rights to Formula E?
The packages that have previously been described for sky, BT sport, and amazon are specific to U.K. and other broadcasters around the world have their own deals.
As mentioned the 3-5pm Saturday blackout is peculiar to the U.K. as other broadcaster territories around the world can choose to show all 380 games if they wish.
Imagine if this was somehow possible and apple U.K. users were treated to a premier league package (if for example amazon U.K. backed out of theirs at renewal time), how do you square the fact that Apple TV plus allows you to watch a certain premier league game if you’re in the U.K. but not if you’re in the US or France? Would they need to up the price of the U.K. Apple TV sub to cover it?
It would mean a VPN as apple would need to geo lock their service.
Apple’s strategy to me makes more sense if they did deals like the MLS one - highly lucrative world wide rights - but that only really works for relatively cheap sports they can grab world rights to.
For example, would it be cheap to grab the rights to Formula E?
May your Mac kernel panic a thousand times for that comment!
Doesn’t Sky require broadband or a satellite dish as well?
And don’t forget that’ll be standard def, you then have to pay more for HD or get a deal with it included, and then more again for 4K unless you strike a deal, plus it’s an 18 month contract and Sky WILL put the prices up mid contract at least once. And it’s the same with the football although that’s even more expensive, so talk of Apple looking into buying rights for the leagues is fantastic news, however, it may be a case like with F1 where they can buy the rights to air but they won’t be legally allowed to air the matches in the U.K., because Sky has the monopoly on the rights.
The FA arent stupid and there are a huge amount of people already subscribed to these companies for long contracts that won't be able to get out which means there will be a lot of unhappy fans. The likelihood is that this would be an additional subscription on top of Apple TV anyway which makes it even more niche.
The other element is the amount of people who use the sky box as their smart TV. There will be a large amount of people with TVs that dont have the ability to install the Apple TV app as in real terms its relatively new and a lot of older smart TVs won't support it as venders tend to drop support relatively quickly. Therefore they would need to buy new hardware too in a new TV or a new smart box.
These are all economic decisions the rights seller will think about, it is about money but it also needs to be about practicality for the current viewers.
Like I say Apple TV is so niche from a content perspective and there isnt really anything for UK viewers to see apart from Apple TV originals and apple unlike sky, Netflix and amazon dont want to make other content available. Although the app does allow you to view other content you dont get that content with the sub.
So its not really that appealing as a package currently.
no requirement to have internet with "normal" sky, the dish comes free
obviously for the new sky "stream" service you need internet, but you'd need internet for F1 TV also.
Amazon only get access to to sets of fixtures - Boxing Day & one mid-week slot
Certainly wouldn't pay for them as we don't use Prime
no it hasn't.
we've had Setanta, ESPN, then BT.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Premier_League_broadcasters
I stand corrected, subscribed to BT/Sky but cannot recall Satanta at all - BT took over ESPN in UK perhaps where the confusion has arisen
it should be remembered that the 3pm blackout was in force long before the EPL was ever a thing.
the rule was also nothing to do with the EU, but was brought in in the 1960's with the blackout time being 2:45pm - 5:25pm
the blackout includes games from any country, not just UK games. one will remember when La Liga games were shown live, but the first 15 minutes couldn't be shown because it started within the blackout period.
the rule also covers the whole of the UK, not just "England"
The irony is that they do this so that the one company can't jack up the price, but now you have more streamers that you need to subscribe to if you want to watch all the games which costs more than if you had the one company.
What they should do is allow one streamer (let's call them AlphaInc) to have rights to show all the games, but also, have all of the games split up between the competition. That way each game is broadcast by exactly two streamers always, AlphaInc and one competitor. If you want to watch all the games you can sub to AlphaInc, if you only want some, you can sub to the competition, if you want to watch all the games but hate AlphaInc, you can sub to all the the competition.
Imo, everyone wins in this scenarios. Consumers get real choice. One streamer gets exclusive rights to all the games. The other streamers get access to more games. The EPL gets to double sell each game.
that makes zero sense, how can one "streamer" get exclusive rights if other "streamers" have access to show them at the same time?
exclusivity means they have sole rights.
the current EPL games are divided up into packages (as they were up to 2022, they may have changed slightly from 2022 onwards but broadly the same)
Sky
- Package B: 32 matches at 5.30pm on Saturdays
- Package C: 24 matches at 2pm on Sundays and eight matches at 7.45pm on Saturdays
- Package D: 32 matches at 4.30pm on Sundays
- Package E: 24 matches at 8pm on Mondays or 7.30pm/8pm on Fridays, and eight matches at 2pm on Sundays
- Package A: 32 matches at 12.30pm on Saturdays
- Package G: 20 matches from two midweek fixture programmes and five matches from the split weekend
- Package F: 20 matches per season from one bank holiday and one midweek fixture programme
should also be noted that BT are withdrawing from the end of this season and they have sold their "BT Sports" business to WB/Discovery and will be broadcast on TNT branded channels.
I recently reviewed a Neilson report about global cumulative TV reach (for sports) in 2021.
I was surprised to see Formula 1 take the pole position (sorry, I couldn't resist - it's the dad in me). NFL trailed by ~30M. Soccer/fútbol, whom I thought would be top dog, came in 5th, trailing F1 by ~117M.
It was seeing those stats that triggered a memory (accurate or other) that Edie Cue was working a potential F1 partnership. I'm probably mixing three stories into my own version. 🤪
He means one company gets exclusively the right to show every single game, while others get rights to packages of games; i.e. Apple win the right to broadcast every single game AND Sky/BT/etc have packaged rights where one of them also shows the same game.
Doubt they would be interested in this though
Yes it’s nonsense
It’s not exclusive if 2 different companies can show the same game
With the EFL in discussions to sell every game from The Championship, to League Two, as well as the EFL Cup, and EFL trophy to 1 distributor, you would think that the Premier League would have a strong case selling all their games to 1 distributor isn’t anti-competitive. In fact as it is the EFL have sold their current rights to Sky Sports, although I admit not every game is shown.
Currently the Premier League are adamant that they won’t scrap the 3PM blackout rule, however the EFL are seemingly just as adamant to do so, so the Premier League will be pressured to do so if they do.
On top of that, as a Newcastle United fan, I know all too well that Richard Masters will do exactly what the top 6 clubs tell him to do, and they will want to scrap the 3pm blackout rule.
I’m not sure if you are joking or if you have simply no idea how football works in the U.K., and the geography of the U.K.
It would be so sweet.
Manchester U at Tottenham Spurs for the world series, conference east playoffs.