BSkyB to ‘tighten belt’ after EPL football rights deal
Paying £2.3 billion to keep its grip on the corporate crown jewels of
English Premier League football will mean belt tightening in ‘other
areas’ BSkyB MD Barney Francis has conceded.
Speaking at the second Leaders in Football conference at Chelsea’s
Stamford Bridge home, the executive conceded that the company would have
to absorb the cost by saving costs in other parts of the business.
In June 2012, the English Premier League sold the rights for seven TV
packages for the 2013/14 to 2015/16 football seasons for an overall
value of £3.018 billion. The seven rights packages—comprising five of 26
matches and two of 12 matches—with BSkyB securing packages B, C, D, E
and F totalling 116 matches and BT Vision grabbing packages A and G with
38 matches. The deal represents an incredible increase of £1.25 billion
on the current broadcast settlement, which shares rights between BSkyB
and ESPN.
It is generally thought that the astronomical figures paid for rights
was driven by a major play by Al Jazeera which forced an unprecedented
second round of bidding. Losing the rights to the Premier League would
have put into question the whole future of Sky and new deal will cements
the company’s place as the engine of UK pay-TV.
However, Francis conceded that accommodating such a huge payments meant
making strategic priorities and to trim cots in other parts of the
business to preserve the football coverage.
He told delegates at the conference: “We have flexibility to absorb the
bulk of these costs but it is a challenge for the whole company and
choices have to be made…That's not necessarily less money for other
sports but we have to tighten our belts on some of those. We had to make
some tough choices and one of those was around Premiership
Rugby…Premiership Rugby made a decision to go with BT, it wasn't
particularly working for us and we were the junior partners."
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