The former Tottenham chairman Lord Sugar believes the Premier League’s new £5.14bn television deal is “pretty negative for the future of international football for England”.Sky and BT Sport have combined to increase the Premier League’s British screening costs by 70% in a new deal to run from 2016 to 2019.
Three years ago the rights were sold for a combined total of £3.018bn – an average of £6.53m per game. Sky has almost doubled its investment to retain five of seven packages, including the new Friday night slot, with the Premier League set to earn around £113,000 a minute from domestic television revenue.
Following the announcement Sky shares were down 5%, while BT shares, which have been at a 14-year high, rose 4% as it was seen as having secured the better deal. Sky admitted the price paid per year is around £330m more than City analysts had forecast, but insisted it has plans in place to fund the bid.
Lord Sugar, who was instrumental in the formation of the Premier League in 1992, has few doubts about where the majority of the income will end up.
“It is an amazing amount of money,” he told the BBC. “In one way it is positive for the teams, but I think it is pretty negative for the future of international football for England.
“The more money that is given to the clubs, the more money is spent on players. Anyone who knows the effect of prune juice, it is pretty simple, it goes in one end and comes out the other and that is exactly what is going to happen with this money.
“A deal is a deal. I suppose the Premier League hierarchy have done a good deal in squeezing the most amount of money out of broadcasters and someone has done a very, very good job so I suppose they are happy. Will they be happy in a year when all the money they have got they have given to players and players agents is another story.”
The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Scudamore, said the competition justified the astronomical sums.
“To my core, I believe this is a success story,” said Scudamore. “And I believe it’s a great UK export, it attracts a whole lot of positive feelings about the UK.
“If you go and do any international survey, things like the Premier League, the BBC, the Queen: they are things that people feel are good about the UK.
“Our own Prime Minister is quite happy to travel the world and talk about what a good thing the Premier League is. And we’re proud that our clubs and the league is looked at in that way.
“If you had your house and you were about to sell it tomorrow you would probably want to sell it for as much as someone was willing to pay for it. We have an asset here, clearly it’s an asset that people value, and we’ve marketed it in a way and put it up for sale and people have paid what they’ve paid for it.”
Sky will pay £4.176bn for the lion’s share of the rights including the coveted Sunday evening slot, while BT Sport will pay £960m. BT Sport will have the Saturday evening package, however, instead of the Saturday lunchtime slot.
Source: Guardian
