The Sport Thread

Confirmation of the BBC Live Premier League plan

Plan to show some English top-flight matches on BBC for the first time if behind closed doors goes ahead. https://t.co/uBJmuIUtOx

— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) May 15, 2020

The gist being that out of the 45 remaining matches which haven't already got TV coverage allocated:

Sky Sports: 32
BT Sport: 8
Amazon & BBC: 5

Plus a "reasonable amount" of matches FTA - potentially via Sky & BT's YouTube channels or similar, or extra highlights packages airing on the BBC.

28 years today since it was annoucned Sky would have exclusive live coverage of the Premier League. Are there any broadcast news reports of the time floating around?

#OnThisDay in 1992 : It was announced that Sky Sports will provide live coverage of football's new Premier League. Sky have outbid ITV Sport for the rights, with highlights awarded to the BBC, meaning the return of Match of the Day on a weekly basis. pic.twitter.com/ySuUz40wgn

— Russty_Russ #Retro (@russty_russ) May 18, 2020

Interesting, AZPV Germany muscling in on the Bundesliga with a one off domestic rights share with DAZN for tonight's fixture

That's because DAZN sub-licenced the rights from Eurosport after Discovery gave up to the Bundesliga. When Eurosport refused to pay the latest installment of money to the Bundesliga, there were doubts whether DAZN would be allowed to show any matches, according to a number of reports from Germany last week. This is a bit of a fudge arrangement, initially for one game only.

Amazon Prime DE viewers have previously been able to access Bundesliga via Eurosport 2Xtra through Prime Channels, which was a straight simulcast of DAZN.

DAZN - The next snake in the grass for Premier League rights..

They already have rights to air it in Spain and Canada. It is interesting how they have no presence in the UK despite having been founded in London and their HQ is here I believe.

They were planning to launch something in the UK this Spring but for obvious reasons that has not gone ahead.

The DAZN service was launched by Perform Group, who subsequently split into two and renamed one half of themselves DAZN.

It seems to be quite difficult in the UK to make sports rights cover their costs on their own. Sky make it work because it's part of a bigger entertainment package, BT do it to sell broadband, and Amazon just want you to buy more stuff via their website. The likes of Setanta and Eleven have shown that it's not always easy to be a pure-play sport subscription service. I guess local market conditions are more favourable for DAZN elsewhere.

Indeed.

I agree that it would be challenging in the UK. Stand-alone services seem to struggle rather a lot here.

The only way DAZN would work is if every game was available for TV viewing, even 3PMs.

Some live UK sport coming soon. Social distancing snooker tournament starting on ITV4 from 1st June

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-05-21/live-uk-sport-returns-as-itv-cues-up-snooker/