Premier League TV Shake Up

Author: Scott Cooper
Date: 20/6/03

 The Premier league want to make major changed to the way Barclaycard Premiership Football is shown on British Television. 

 The Premier League are putting together new deals which will increase the amount of Live Premier League games shown on a Saturday.

 The League will continue to ban games being shown Live between 3-5pm on a Saturday but will introduce new kick-off times for Live coverage.

 The new deals for the 2004 - 2007 season includes the amount of live games to go up almost a third. There will be 138 games shown Live (including 40 Pay Per View) compared to the 106 games shown last season.

 The highlight package which Television Authorities can bid for will be enhanced allowing companies such as the BBC to show full games after live transmition.

 The new package the Premier League has released gives free to air channels much more chance of winning, which would enable the likes of the BBC and ITV to screen Live Premiership games.

 The new deal from the Premier League now includes:

*Three separate packages of live matches open to bids from free-to-air broadcasters, such as BBC and ITV, or pay TV broadcasters, such as Sky.

*One of those three packages can be shown as pay-per-view but does not have to be.

*An enhanced highlights package on free-to-air television aimed at giving more clubs exposure.

*A new package of 'near-live, long-form transmission' of games to be shown after the highlights. This is available to free-to-air, pay TV or internet broadband.

*Broadcasters can team up to buy packages. Theoretically, ITV and BBC could bid together for a package of live games and then split them up.

BskyB paid £1.1billion to screen Live Premiership games in the last offering from the Premier League which ran from 2001 - 2002.

 Premier League Chief Exec Richard Scudamore said "We have offered what we believe to be an extremely varied and attractive set of rights, which will give consumers greater choice than ever before."

Wolves

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