Premier League to roll over TV rights deal

The Premier League has announced that they have agreed to roll over their existing television deal with broadcasters for an extra 3 years.

The new deal with broadcasters Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime Video and BBC Sport will run from 2022 to 2025.

The current £4.7bn deal, agreed in 2018, represented a 10% drop in value.

The Government has approved the deal "in principle" with an "exclusion order" under the competition act, which allows the league to renew without its normal tender process.

"In light of the damaging impact of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the English football pyramid, the Premier League was able to demonstrate to Government exceptional and compelling reasons for the Exclusion Order," the league said.

Clubs had been concerned that there could be another fall in value if the usual open-market auction started as planned next month.

The value of rights for domestic leagues in Europe also appears to have peaked.

The Premier League say that the renewals will provide financial certainty to professional clubs and also enables an additional £100m of funding to be provided to clubs throughout the football pyramid over the next four years.

The extra funding will be available to more than 1,000 clubs in the National League system, women's and girls' football, EFL League One and League Two clubs and the Football Foundation.

It will also support a number of football-wide projects, including the Premier League's work looking at head injuries in football, anti-discrimination and fan groups.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said: "We would like to express our gratitude to our broadcast partners for their continued commitment to the Premier League and support for the football pyramid.

"Covid-19 has had a significant impact on football, and renewals with our UK broadcast partners will reduce uncertainty, generate stability and promote confidence within the football pyramid."

As part of the new deal, BT Sport say that to help with the fixture congestion, they will change their Saturday lunchtime game to an evening slot when teams involved have played in Europe on the previous Wednesday.