Yahoo! has concluded a multi-million pound deal to screen highlights of Premier League matches online from 2010 to 2013. The rights were formerly held by Virgin and Yahoo won the rights in an auction. Virgin had won the online rights from Sky and before that they were held by Vodafone.
Yahoo! has concluded a multi-million pound deal to screen highlights of Premier League matches online from 2010 to 2013. The rights were formerly held by Virgin and Yahoo won the rights in an auction. Virgin had won the online rights from Sky and before that they were held by Vodafone.
Although television revenues remain far more important, diversification continues to take place and new media are likely to become an increasingly important revenue source for the Premiership. From a regulatory point of view, the Yahoo deal also helps the Premier League by giving it another substantial media group other than Sky on its roster of rights holders, alongside ESPN and the BBC.
Yahoo hopes to make considerable sums of money from video advertising given that football appeals to a young male audience who have money to spend and are open to new brands in a way that older people are not. The company has also invested heavily in sports rights in the US as it seeks to retain its independence, but this is its first significant move into UK sports content. There is a lot of illegal content on rival sites, not least Google-owned YouTube so Yahoo could be making a statement that they are to place to come to for legitimate content.
The Premier League has also concluded the only outstanding contract for its 2010 to 2013 rights round – the delayed “long form” highlights, packaged as Football First. These have once again been won by Sky. Having tied up the final loose ends on its domestic rights deals and finalised the outstanding overseas deals in Russia and Albania, the Premier League will have banked more than £3.3bn from its media contracts at home and abroad, even once all expenses are factored in. That is an astonishing increase on the £2.7bn achieved last time, particularly given the context of a global recession, with overseas rights as the main engine of growth.