Once again, the extremely connected John Ourand of Sports Business Journal has broken yet another story involving the sports television bidding process.
He breaks news that the current rightsholders for the US rights for the English Premier League, Fox and ESPN have dropped out of the bidding for the upcoming three year contract that would begin in the 2013-14 season. Ourand first tweeted that the Fox/ESPN entity was dropping out and that NBC has emerged as the frontrunner to the rights.
SBD: Fox and ESPN have dropped out of the EPL bidding process. NBCU is the clear front runner. BeIN the big question mark. Link coming.
— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) October 26, 2012
It’s a bit of a surprise because earlier this month when NBC won the rights to Formula 1 races beating out Fox, it was thought that the Peacock would not have room for English Premier League games.
Now this has seemingly all changed with today’s developments with Fox/ESPN dropping out of the bidding. Ourand reports that NBC tripled Fox/ESPN’s bid for the rights.
The dark horse in the room is the Al Jazeera-owned beIN Sport which has deep pockets and has the rights to Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s La Liga and France’s Ligue 1. What role will it have, if any, in the upcoming EPL contract?
Fox issued a statement which notes its disappointment in losing the EPL.
Fox: We were disappointed to learn today that EPL has elected to move forward with a different media partner despite FOx’s aggressive bid
— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) October 26, 2012
Fox had used English Premier League games as a launching pad for programming and depends solidly on the games for the bulk of its schedule. This leaves Fox Soccer with the UEFA Champions League, CONCACAF Champions League, Scottish Premier League, the World Cup from 2014-2022, but the loss of the English Premier League leaves huge holes in the schedule.
EPL Talk notes
that Fox Soccer and its previous incarnations had aired the English Premier League for 15 years and while an official announcement has yet to be made by the league, Fox/ESPN will continue to air games until the end of this season.
We’ll continue to monitor the developments in this story.
