Social media giant, Facebook has stunned its competitors after agreeing its first broadcast deal with the Premier League, winning exclusive rights to show live matches in large parts of Asia from 2019.
Domestic rights were once more dominated by Sky and BT Sport, but US online retailer Amazon also struck a groundbreaking deal to livestream exclusive coverage of 20 matches per season from 2019.
Facebook is understood to have beaten BeIn Sports, a part of the Al Jazeera Media Network and Fox Sports Asia in the auction to gain live broadcast rights in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 2019 to 2022 in a deal worth about £200 million.
Facebook’s successful bid in Asia follows Amazon’s breakthrough deal in the UK last month in which it gained the right to show 20 live matches per season from 2019 and is the latest indication of the Premier League’s determination to appeal to streaming services as well as traditional broadcasters.
Those matches will be available to Amazon Prime Video members in the UK at no extra cost to their existing subscription.
While the cost of domestic rights stayed at a similar level to the previous deal, Premier League chiefs hoped to earn more money from overseas rights and were determined to appeal to streaming services as well as traditional broadcasters.
The Premier League is also understood to have held talks with YouTube and Netflix over rights deals in several territories and believe that targeting technology companies is the best way of securing future revenue growth for the clubs.
Facebook will live stream all 380 Premier League matches from 2019 in its biggest and most high-profile sports offering to date.
The move is Facebook’s biggest push into top-level football. Previously the organisation have livestreamed MLS and La Liga matches on its platform.
Earlier this year the California-based juggernaut hired Eurosport CEO Peter Hutton to spearhead its push into sport, having grown its interest in live-streaming deals across the globe.
English football is one of the most popular sports in Asia and Facebook’s move is a bid to boost user engagement on the continent, where it is up against the likes of Weibo and Qzone.
Last year the company missed out on Indian Premier League cricket to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, despite a £450million offer.
After being beaten in a bid to secure rights for cricket’s Indian Premier League by Star India in 2017, Facebook poached Eurosport’s chief executive officer, Robert Hutton, earlier this year with a brief to increase its sports portfolio, but is limited at present to streaming some Major League Baseball, College Basketball and occasional Champions League games in the United States in a partnership with Fox Sports.
Amazon has ambitions to increase its offering to UK customers during the 2019-22 cycle and is likely to bid for the right to show goal-clips and near-live action, which has yet to go to market. The final UK package, which is held by Sky Sports and includes its Football First programmes which re-run entire matches on Saturday evenings, will be auctioned off later this summer.
Outgoing chief executive Richard Scudamore has been seeking to lure technology companies such as the aforementioned duo, plus YouTube and Netflix, to help continue to drive up earnings.
