Sports Extra (TNT/Premier)

Some U.K. press speculation that details of the combined BT/Eurosport offering are to be unveiled tomorrow.

No details on any of that yet, although the statement when the JV was created did say that they would enter into a long term carriage deal with Sky post 2030. I can’t imagine there’ll be any changes to carriage in the Irish market for the current BT Sport channels for the duration of this FAPL rights cycle - I’m not sure they’ll even be able to put the current BT channels on discovery+ while Sky are still handling all wholesale distribution in Ireland. (I don’t think that deal will last in that form past this rights cycle though, given WBD and it’s predecessors (unlike BT) have been dealing direct with Irish providers for decades, and I think they will want to put the BT channels on discovery+ here too as soon as they’re able to do so).

That is interesting. From what I can gather it’s their Saturday 3pm pick but it’s been moved to Sunday due to Man United’s Europa League R16 fixture on the Thursday. Previously when this happened Premier lost the game and they were required to pick from the remaining 3pms but obviously that’s changed now.

Yeah it’s changed on the FAPL website to Leeds v Brighton now too. Odd that. But it was the case before that if a match got moved out of Sat 3pm they had to re-pick from the remaining 3pms so really the surprise was that Man Utd v Southampton was still listed in the first place.

But even if they decided to do so, would they make any more money than they are making now?

You have to appreciate that when the Premier League sell their TV rights, they are not doing it for the benefit of the football fan. They are doing it for the purposes of making as much money for their member clubs as possible, and no other reason.

Right now there is one dedicated Irish sports broadcaster, Premier Sports. The two other Irish sports channels, eir Sport and VMTV Sport have both gone. Sky made a go at the 3pms a few years ago and by all accounts had virtually given up on them at the end of the rights period. It gave them no extra benefit over their existing packages.

Sky and BT have been guaranteed time slot exclusivity, so forget about those games moved out of Sat 3pm for non-TV related reasons (like Man United v Southampton today) being offered. Sky do not want their package being undermined by Irish viewers having competing games against Super Sunday every UEFA Europa League match week. What could possibly be offered is the other 3pms but realistically would that add any value for either the FAPL or the broadcaster?

In the countries that get all 380 games, all 380 games generally go to one broadcaster. Ireland is the only country other than the U.K. in which the games are broken into 8 or so packages and this is done specifically to ensure the U.K. rights holders have an opportunity to get the same rights in ROI as they have in the U.K.

I don’t think we’ll see any change in that until July 2025 when the current deal expires. After that who knows? WBD will probably want to offer TNT through the discovery+ app just as they will be in the U.K. from this July and the current arrangement granting Sky exclusive wholesale rights for ROI won’t sit with that. I’m not saying there won’t still be a deal with Sky but I don’t think it’ll be the sort of market wide exclusive wholesale arrangement BT had, it’ll probably be a more traditional carriage deal.

Nobody really knows except Michael O’Rourke.

The arrangement they have means they have exactly the same number of subscribers as BT Sport, so I expect they do well at least on the commercial premises front as most pubs at least in Dublin seem to have BT (I can only speak anecdotally on that one, no actual numbers are published).

Since the separation from Viaplay they sell Irish advertising which is a new revenue stream I guess.

But they are a private company that doesn’t have to publish accounts and we don’t really know how profitable they are, to be honest. And yeah they rarely get any media coverage.