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The Premier League is to launch its own streaming service, with live coverage of all 380 matches over a season available directly to fans – but only if you live in Singapore.
Known as Premier League Plus, the new app will be launched before next season and will be the first time match coverage will be sold direct to consumers.
Described by the Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, as simply being a “learning” opportunity for the world’s biggest domestic football league, the move will still cause shockwaves throughout the game.
“From next season onward, from August, Premier League Plus is going to happen,” Masters said. “For the first time the Premier League is going to have its own customers. We’re looking to build a business, but we’re also looking to learn to see how that might be replicable around the world.”
Masters told the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London that Premier League Plus would be offered in partnership with the existing rights holder, Starhub, and would be a “24-seven” service.
“It’s going to be a really exciting product, and the big change is I think that the Premier League will have its own customers and means us delving into things like promotion and pricing,” said Masters. “That’s why it’s an important step for us.”
The idea of a “Premflix” offering has been speculated on for a number of years. Premier League club owners have backed the idea, with Chelsea’s Todd Boehly telling the FT conference last year that the league should sell its global rights direct to the streaming service Netflix. Instead, the Premier League has gone for a trial approach, with Masters telling an audience of industry insiders that international broadcast revenues had grown by 27% through the latest three-year rights cycle.
Also appearing at the conference was the chair of the Independent Football Regulator, David Kogan. He called on the Premier League and EFL to agree a new “long-term sustainable agreement” over financial redistribution, arguing that it would lead to “less regulation” in the future.
Kogan also reaffirmed that parachute payments, which have been a barrier to any resolution between the Premier League and EFL, would come under scrutiny as part of the forthcoming State of the Game review. “Parachute payments are not going to vanish overnight,” Kogan said, “[but] the discussion about parachute payments is a fundamental part of the discussion about distribution.”
The chair of the EFL, Rick Parry, also speaking at the summit, said that parachute payments had represented 6% of EFL turnover when introduced in 1992, but by the 2018-19 season had reached 173% of turnover. The wage bill of clubs in receipt of the payments was more than double that of the rest of the Championship. “The Premier League chase is the most expensive lottery ticket on the planet,” he said.
Kogan said he believed the “backstop” option which would allow the regulator to impose a distribution deal would not need to be activated and that the leagues would come to a deal independently. Masters said that while “we’re all agreed we want a strong pyramid”, he thought “it should be left to the organisations to come up with these agreements.”
