BSkyB to ‘tighten belt’ after EPL football rights deal

Editor | 11-10-2012

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."