Sky will show at least 215 Premier League games per season on TV from 2025-26.
- TNT Sports wins 52 game package
- BBC Sport secures TV highlights after other broadcasters drop out
- Streaming services including Amazon Prime Video and DAZN miss out.
The Premier League has concluded deals with Sky Sports and TNT Sports for five UK live packages covering a four year period starting in August 2025 until May 2029. They’re the largest sports media rights deals ever concluded in the UK.
Sky Sports Premier League rights 2025-2029
Sky Sports has been awarded live rights packages B, C, D and E, covering a minimum of 215 live matches per season.
This will include:
- More than 140 matches played at weekends, plus evening matches on Fridays and Mondays.
- Full coverage of three midweek match rounds.
- All 10 matches on the final day of each season, for the first time ever.
TNT Sports Premier League rights 2025-2029
TNT Sports has been awarded live rights package A. This will mean the broadcaster gets just 52 live matches per season.
This will include:
- Exclusive coverage of matches played on Saturdays at 12.30pm
- Full coverage of two midweek match rounds.
More games will be shown on TV than before
For the first time in the UK, all matches taking place outside of the Saturday 3pm “closed period”, including those displaced to Sunday 2pm because of club participation in European competitions, will be broadcast live.
BBC retains TV highlights
BBC Sport has been awarded highlights rights for all 380 Premier League matches each season.
The deal also includes “additional digital rights” for the BBC’s online platforms.
- The agreement will see BBC Match of the Day continue to bring Premier League action to millions of viewers each week.
- The Premier League also speaks of Match of the Day running alongside “a full range of additional programming”.
Other major broadcasters had previously signalled they wouldn’t be bidding for the highlights.
How much did this cost the broadcasters?
The Premier League says the announced agreements will deliver a total of £6.7billion in revenue across the four-year period. That’s inclusive of a 4% increase in live rights value compared to the previous process.
Streamers miss out
After steadily building up UK sports rights, Amazon Prime Video has been rapidly losing them, too. It gave up on tennis coverage, which will be shown on Sky Sports in the new year, and now it has lost Premier League coverage.
Amazon Prime Video will screen Premier League games for the last time next December (2024). Its Premier League coverage quickly gained commendation from fans, who took to extra features including a commentary-free stadium sound (aka Stadium FX) option.
Meanwhile, DAZN, which previously indicated its interest has been left empty-handed. At one point, DAZN was in the running to buy BT Sport to secure some coverage, but was pipped at the post by Warner Bros Discovery.
It’s good news for Sky, who have dug deep to maintain their position as the main broadcaster of live Premier League coverage until near the end of the decade.
The broadcaster faces intense competition in other sectors, with Warner Bros Discovery morphing from being a mere supplier of channels to major rival threat, poised to take away the rights to many of Sky’s best known entertainment shows in the coming 18 months. Disney and Paramount have also gone from supplier to rival direct-to-consumer operators in recent years. Therefore anything Sky can hold on to on an exclusive basis is a bonus for the broadcaster.
Marc Thornham
[Image: Premier League]