Interesting that AZP have the Bank Holiday and one MW fixture set. BT getting two MW’s. I’d have thought the other way around would have been the most likely scenario, but hey-ho.
Didn't know the radio rights were bundled in on this, or that BT had a medium wave outlet?
Massive surprise in the Irish rights announcement - that while Sky and BT have won the same packages that they have in the U.K., both the 3pm package and the package Amazon won have gone to Premier Sports.
Not eir Sport? A mistake, or an indicator of something else I wonder.
Interesting that AZP have the Bank Holiday and one MW fixture set. BT getting two MW’s. I’d have thought the other way around would have been the most likely scenario, but hey-ho.
Interesting that AZP have the Bank Holiday and one MW fixture set. BT getting two MW’s. I’d have thought the other way around would have been the most likely scenario, but hey-ho.
Didn't know the radio rights were bundled in on this, or that BT had a medium wave outlet?
I wonder who'll be host broadcaster for the Amazon games. At the moment, Sky and BT produce the match coverage for their own matches, with Sky and the BBC divvying up the OBs for the non-live games, The World Feed is derived from these by Premier League Productions at IMG, who have access to some of the individual cameras too.
But if Amazon are showing all the games in a matchweek, are they also going to be responsible for mounting the OBs? There's a lot of expertise required there for just a couple of days a year...
Now confirmed that Amazon's midweek round is the December one, so with the Boxing Day round that puts all of thier games in the same month. Presumably the strategy for them will be for that to be a big incentive for people to get Prime in the run-up to Christmas, with the free delivery get an even bigger share of gift sales and hope lots of people forget to cancel at the end of the free trial.
Still have a bee in my bonett over this. If you want to get the streamers involved, spin off a package and ring fence it to bid on that exclusively.
Don't lump it in with the other TV rights all for the sake of trying to destroy a very successful and stable UK rights market.
Anyway suspect AZP will take the IMG/PLP world feed, but use different commentators for the UK territory.
If there are more than one Premier league game on an evening, it's very rare if you hear the commentator on the world feed give scores from the other games.
Still, Boxing Day 2019 will be a novelty for me. Finding an illigal stream of a legal stream..
But if Amazon are showing all the games in a matchweek, are they also going to be responsible for mounting the OBs? There's a lot of expertise required there for just a couple of days a year...
I was wondering the exact same thing. AIUI Amazon are using IMG Studios as their base for their UK Tennis operation, I wonder if they will call upon IMG to help with host broadcast responsibilities they may have inherited via their Premier League deal?
Perhaps Amazon will use it as a
very
expensive loss-leader to drive free Christmas 2019 subscriptions to Amazon Prime, hoping people will forget to cancel before the direct debit kicks in?
Seems a bit daft to give the Irish version of that package to an outfit whose broadcasts are widely seen in the UK anyway (either through Irish Sky boxes, pubs or dodgy streams).
The Premier Sports one is very odd but not for the reasons you state.
Up till now - and as recently as last month’s Pro 14 rights announcement - Premier Sports and eir Sport (nee Setanta Sports)have effectively been acting as a single entity when it came to buying UK&Ireland rights to sports events. There were some times either went alone, like Eir’s UEFA club football rights (now concluded) or Premier Sports GAA championship rights. But generally they acted as one unit.
This is different because it’s the first time Premier Sports has bought Irish-only (as opposed to U.K. only or U.K. and Ireland) rights to any sporting event, and begs the question as to how long more eir and Premier Sports partnership will last. Indeed it may already be over - the Irish Times reports that Michael O’Rourke’s (Premier Sports founder) position at eir Sport came to a formal end last month, though as of now Setanta are still playing out eir Sport’s channels and Eir Sport 2 is still just Premier Sports.
It’s interesting because it raises the question as to whether Premier Sports will now re-enter the Irish market in its own right? At the same time it strikes me that with the Pro14 coverage it would make sense for them to continue to cooperate. They’ve both committed to show every game and it would make sense for them to pool their coverage.