Allen Lew, the chief executive of Optus, has said the telecommunications company could pursue further sports rights after acquiring exclusive rights in Australia for football’s English Premier League.
Optus at the weekend confirmed it had signed a three-season deal, from 2016-17 to 2018-19, for rights to the EPL. The deal includes live coverage on television, broadband and mobile platforms for all 380 games per season.
Pay-television operator Foxtel, the Premier League’s sole broadcaster in the country since 1997, will be dislodged as the league’s rights-holder in Australia as a result of the new deal.
Speaking to Fairfax Media, Lew said the company could follow up on this deal by pursuing rights to other major sports events. Optus already has a streaming partnership in place with the Cricket Australia national governing body.
“Sport is the main content that Australians like,” Lew said. “This is iconic – it’s a major plank in our content strategy but it doesn't live alone. “We've seen how other providers have used the EPL to their advantage in terms of bringing value to their basic carriage service and we think that we can do the same thing here. It gives a lot of credibility to our stated strategic objective of wanting to differentiate ourselves through content.”