Premier League rights from 2019-2022 awarded

Premier League: “UK broadcast rights sales process has not yet concluded, but we can announce that five of the seven live packages have been awarded.”

— Richard Conway (@richard_conway) February 13, 2018

Sky and BT maintain balance of power with £4.46bn deal for the prime 5 TV packages for 2019 to 2022. Last two TV packages still undecided with “multiple bidders”. This means Amazon and probably BT, perhaps Sky, fighting it out

— Mark Sweney (@marksweney) February 13, 2018

Very intriguing...they’ve only announced the winners of five of the seven packages.

Sky 128 live games
BT 32.

Presumably the two packages they haven’t announced are the “all games” ones?

Edit: among the packages that have been announced, the big change is that Sky and BT swap back time slots on Saturday, so that BT has 12:30pm and Sky 5:30pm. Plus Sky now control all first pick games at weekends.

BT now to show 1230 KO's BUT Lose all FIRST PICKS.

Commentators suggesting that the other two packs likely to split

SKY for one, and either Amazon or BT for the other, neither being seen as clear favourite, leaning towards Amazon if I had to pick one.

Re the 10 fixture packs these could be spread around

Bank Holiday pack say KO's at 1230, 1500, 1730 and 2000 so ten matches spread so say 3 1230, 2 1500, 3 1730 and 2 2000 matches.

The Midweek rounds also could see spreads say 3 on Tues, 4 on Wed and 3 on Thursday.

Sounds like the interest in the simulcast packages (F and G) was limited. Huge resourcing challenge for anyone, including Sky or BT, to cover 10 matches at the same time. And not clear that UK viewers like the idea.

— Adam Parsons (@adamparsons) February 13, 2018

Is sub-licencing allowed? Could the package winner of F or G then give a couple of games to Sky/BT?

So these 'simulcast' packages mean that they can show all the matches that happen on a particular night/Bank Holiday?

It does sound like packages that were designed for VOD devices

A test bed for a future MLB.TV / PLP type service.

Amidst much argument on Twitter tonight, one comment was interesting, there's a real possibility that both packs F and G didn't meet their reserve prices even on second bid. If so that explains the partial 'declaration' tonight. It opens a real quandary for the PL as to how to proceed.

Do they continue the current auction for those two packs, if so we should get a result on them this week, or alternatively restart both from scratch? I very much think that the PL would like Sky and BT to pick up these packs because of the furore of needing a third contract to watch matches occurring on either four or six days of each of the seasons for which these rights have been offered.

So far it appears both Sky and BT won't be paying any more, or at least much more, than they did last time, to which News at Ten correspondent Peter Smith has just said, rather optimistically, that fans may not be charged any more than they are now (yeah right!)

So Sky have the Saturday night matches then - and indeed come out of this better than they have done since BT's emergence basically having every slot except Saturday lunchtime (the least favoured) and regaining all first picks. They won't care one bit about not winning the midweek/Bank Holiday games - indeed as things stand BT need that more as even excluding the simulcast games it takes them up to around 40 match slots per year.

Clearly the packages with all the days games just didn't appeal - may be 20 games but effectively it's a package with just 4-5 match slots. Had they thrown in the final day of the season there may have been more interest in that.