Blog: UCL

Ever since the English Premier League (EPL) awarded rights to tech major Amazon in June 2018, the excitement for December 2019 and how Amazon’s live stream delivery would pan out has been palpable. The EPL has long prioritised revenue over reach when entertaining rights bids, but this legacy approach is approaching an inflection point; its addressable audience is ageing, increasing the importance of striking a distribution deal with a digital outlet in order to target younger demographics.

The strategic dilemma as to whether rights holders should seek revenue over reach when allocating domestic rights is inevitably impacted by how dependent services are on premium rights for securing subscriber revenue.

The sports rights landscape has changed fundamentally with the emergence of streaming subscription video on demand (SVOD) services. Digital and broadcast rights used to be separate deals entirely, but now the lines are blurred, and competition is heating up for exclusive coverage of the most sought-after sporting rights.

Eleven Sports, the insurgent subscription video on demand (SVOD) service, is considering closing its operations in the UK and Ireland after failing to secure distribution via traditional TV operators. Failure to attract enough subscribers onto its platform since its launch has only increased doubts over the financial viability of the service.

Sky sports has doubled down on UK football and is the firm favourite to acquire the exclusive rights to broadcast Scottish football (SPFL), having bid £100 million for the next block of rights, starting in 2021 .

Two weeks ago , the NFL warned subscription video on demand (SVOD) services to up their content delivery game if they are to be taken seriously when bidding for premium rights. It must therefore come as good news for streaming services as it appears the BBC may have potentially broken through the latency problem facing streamers of live sporting events.

Eleven Sports is a global sports content provider intent on global expansion. Already established in Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan and the US. Eleven is systematically acquiring new rights to increase its value proposition before launching local channels into new target markets.