TA talks about Premier League broadcast rights: the total value of the new cycle is 12.2 billion pounds, and all Premier League teams are divided into 1.7 billion each year

TA reported that the new round of local broadcast agreement cycle for the Premier League has begun and will last until the end of the 2028-29 season for a period of four years. The total value of the new deal is £6.7 billion, an increase from the previous three-year £5 billion deal. However, if calculated on an annual average, the growth of local broadcast revenue is basically the same. In the new agreement, the broadcaster has obtained more broadcast rights for the competition. This season in the UK, there will be 270 Premier League games live broadcasts, far higher than the 200 games last season. Over the next four years, the broadcast fee per game was about £6.2 million, a significant drop compared to the £10.2 million broadcast fee per game in 2016-19. Despite this, Premier League clubs earn from local broadcast rights every year still maintains around £1.7 billion.

The greater motivation to promote clubs to continue to increase transfer spending comes from richer overseas broadcast agreements. The validity period of these overseas agreements is different from that of local agreements. For example, NBC's broadcast contract in the United States is worth £2 billion, covering a total of six seasons from the 2022-23 to the 2027-28 season. In the next three seasons, the total revenue of local and international broadcasting rights in the Premier League will reach 12.25 billion pounds, 17% higher than the 10.5 billion pounds in the 2022-25 season. This huge additional amount of funds will flow directly into the clubs.

Broadcasting rights are the long-term pillar of Premier League growth and continue to drive club spending. Once the foundation of these rights collapses, such as the broadcasting partner's breach of contract and refusal to pay, and no other company can fill the gap, it will bring a huge impact.

Even with huge broadcast revenue, most Premier League clubs are still in a loss state. The more you earn, the more they spend. In the first 32 seasons ending the 2023-24 season, the total pre-tax losses of Premier League clubs reached 4.4 billion pounds. Only nine of these seasons achieved league-wide profits, with the last two in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons respectively. At that time, thanks to the huge TV broadcast agreement in the 2016-19 season, the rapid growth of revenue exceeded the increase in costs. But soon after, the cost caught up again.

The clubs are extremely dependent on television broadcast revenue. Most clubs have already used broadcast revenue (and even more) in advance for the next few years to pay players’ salaries and transfer fees. In the 2023-24 season, except for the traditional BIG6 giants, more than half of the total revenue of all other clubs comes from broadcasts.