As NBC goes into its final year of its three-year deal to air all 380 games per season. Utilizing mostly NBCSN and then NBC, CNBC and the Extra Time channels, the way the Peacock has distributed the matches plus the plethora of studio programming (Premier League Live, Goal Zone, Match of the Day) as well as bringing in the Men in Blazers has set the template for others to follow.
As the English Premier League prepares to accept bids today from the U.S. networks in either three or six year increments, we look at the potential suitors and the incumbent who are reportedly interested in taking the rights starting in 2016.
We’ll go in alphabetical order:
ESPN
When the network aired matches in 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13, it usually had the early Saturday morning window plus one game on Relegation Sunday. While Sports Business Daily reports that ESPN is bidding separately from Fox this time around, it’s hard to believe that the Alleged Worldwide Leader would be able to handle the entire contract without sublicensing some games to another network.
As ESPN has college football, college football, things wouldn’t loosen up for the network until April which would be the late part of the season. And the network would have to figure out how it would be able to handle the matches. While it’s bidding alone, ESPN President John Skipper told reporters at an advertiser upfront presentation last year, “NBC has done a great job. I watched (Relegation) Sunday. We could do that. But what they do on Saturday, we don’t have the windows for. We could not do all those games,” meaning it would most likely have to find a partner to sublicense matches.
Coupled with reduced ad revenues and a shrinking subscriber base, ESPN may not loosen the purse strings to outbid NBC. It may be in the bidding just to make NBC overbid on a six-year contract, but most likely, this is similar to ESPN’s 2011 Olympic bid, just in name only.
Odds of winning: 68-1
FOX SPORTS MEDIA GROUP
Once the rightsholder for more than a decade, Fox Sports was hoping the EPL would be there when it launched Fox Sports 1 in 2013, but NBC changed those plans with its knockout bid in 2012. With Fox beginning a five-year relationship with the German Bundesliga a week from tomorrow, it’s hard to believe that it would have room to air the English Premier League.
Like ESPN, if Fox were to land the Premier League, it would need to sublicense games to another network.
The Premier League knows Fox has the Bundesliga and wouldn’t want to share platforms with its German counterpart. Fox would have a massive juggling act in trying to schedule EPL and the Bundesliga.
Don’t expect the Premier League to get back in bed with Fox until after the Bundesliga contract and even then they might not do so. If ESPN is a long shot, Fox is even more so.
Odds of winning: 100-1
NBC SPORTS GROUP
The incumbent and heavy favorite, NBC has the infrastructure and has given the EPL plenty of reasons to reward the Peacock. Now NBC has shown in the past two years that it respects the league and its fans. Ratings and viewership have grown during NBC’s term with matches averaging 438,000 viewers in 2013-14 and a record 479,000 in the 2014-15 campaign. This is significantly up from when ESPN/Fox aired the games in the last contract.
Comcast will likely want to keep the English Premier League keeping with the strategy to air European sports on NBCSN and Golf Channel. Since NBC took over Versus and rebranded it to NBC Sports Network and then NBCSN, we’ve seen the network take over the EPL and Formula 1 plus it continues to show the Tour de France, an event inherited from Versus as well as the European PGA Tour on Golf Channel. And with the possibility of obtaining a sublicense of the French Open cable contract which would marry well with NBC’s airing of the event, this has the potential to give the Peacock a very good reputation in bringing early morning sports to the American people.
Odds of winning: 5-2
beIN SPORTS
Since launching in the United States in August 2012, beIN Sports has obtained rights to Serie A in Italy, Spain’s La Liga, France’s Ligue 1, South American World Cup qualifiers as well as U.S. Men’s National Team road World Cup qualifiers and as well as this year’s Copa América.
As of July, beIN Sports was available in only 18.1 million homes which pales in comparison to the other three candidates. beIN did bid for the EPL in 2012, but it doesn’t seem to be in the running this time around. And with the EPL knowing that beIN is not as distributed as well as ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and NBCSN, it probably doesn’t want to go into a marriage where it’s struggling to reach viewers and stunt any momentum gained with NBC.
beIN Sports does have owners who have deep pockets, but the network has struggled to pick up cable providers in the U.S. since it began operation three years ago.
Odds of winning: 1,000,000-1
So as the English Premier League considers the bids that have to be submitted today, it knows that the winning network will have ponied up for exclusive rights and desired content that will fill programming for a good nine months each season.
