Simon Green, head of UK pay-television broadcaster BT Sport, has played down the threat posed by the likes of social media platform Facebook and internet company Amazon in the bidding for the next set of rights to the Premier League, the top division of English club football.
BT Sport, along with pay-television rival Sky, is the Premier League’s current main domestic rights partner having paid £960m (€1.04bn/$1.24bn) for 42 matches per season across the three campaigns spanning 2016-17 to 2018-19.
The next Premier League rights sales process is expected to open before the end of the year and the likes of Amazon and Facebook have been strongly linked to become serious players in the process for the rights spanning the 2019-20 to 2021-22 seasons.
However, Green told UK newspaper The Guardian: “It’s hard to say how the sporting-rights market is going to play out with those brands. The only one which has really dipped its toe into the water is Amazon, who bought the rights to the ATP tennis.
“What’s Amazon’s business model? Is it to sell tennis rackets on the back of showing it? Over a five- or 10-year span, I don’t see those brands competing in the sports-rights buying market in the way ourselves and other established broadcasters are.”
BT Sport has now entered its second cycle as a Premier League rights-holder and Green is confident it can maintain its position in the marketplace. “It takes an awful long time to establish yourself as a sport broadcaster in this country,” he said. “We have a very-difficult-to-please public, more so than anywhere else in the world, when presented with change.
“With football, the public genuinely believe deep down that it’s theirs. We’re picking up what they own on a Saturday evening and plonking it down in their sitting rooms. To do it exactly the way they want all the time is a very difficult ask.”