Al-Jazeera intentions unclear ahead of £2bn-plus auction which involves rights for 154 games a season for three years
The Premier League's £2bn-plus auction of live UK television rights draws to a close on Friday, with a field of potential bidders including al-Jazeera, Google and Channel 4 understood to have dramatically thinned. This leaves current live rights holders BSkyB and ESPN tipped as the main bidders, although industry insiders have not ruled out other contenders.
The auction, for UK TV and digital rights to 154 Premier League games a season for three years from August 2013, had raised the prospect of a bidding war to threaten BSkyB's 20-year dominance of live matches.
BSkyB is expected to increase the £1.62bn it paid for 115 live matches three years ago under the existing deal. Analysts are forecasting that Sky will offer between 10% and 20% more.
In the new auction a single broadcaster is barred from owning live TV rights to more than 116 matches per season, which will suit BSkyB.
The total number of live matches going under the hammer is increasing from 138 to 154. This is understood to please ESPN, which paid £160m for 23 matches under the existing deal.
ESPN is expected to go for all the extra matches to give it 38 live games per season and improve its offering to subscribers. However, it is not thought it will challenge BSkyB for the lion's share of the matches.
The great unknown remains al-Jazeera, which has a formidable financial war chest and has shown an appetite for football rights in France and the US, although one industry source said they thought the Qatar-based broadcaster is unlikely to challenge for Premier League rights this time round.
Nasser al-Khelaifi, director of al-Jazeera Sports, has said that the broadcaster has received the Premier League tender and is "studying whether there is room for another sports channel" in the UK.
Al-Jazeera Sport already has relationships in the UK, using ITV Studios to produce English language commentary for football matches, fronted by Gary Lineker, Ruud Gullit, Alan Shearer and Terry Venables, for ex-pats throughout the Middle East on al-Jazeera +3.
"Al-Jazeera has certainly spent money and done significant work on
evaluating a bid, they have taken it very seriously," said a source
who has followed the broadcaster's plans. "They pulled a major
surprise in France, however the UK situation is completely different
and in the cold light of day there are some major logistical issues
they would have to deal with if they bid".
There have been reports that a UK free-to-air broadcaster was going to attempt to pick up at least one of the two smaller packages of 12 matches per season, which would mean mounting a bid to take packages of games that Disney-owned ESPN controls under the existing deal.
Channel 4 is understood to have looked seriously at bidding for Premier League live rights. However, Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham is said to have decided against submitting a formal offer at a meeting last week.
It is understood the broadcaster believed it could only make money on a package of live Premier League rights by offering a little over half the £2m per match ESPN pays.
ITV is also thought to be out of the running, having decided that it has plenty of live football, including Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup and England home internationals, securing the rights to the latter in January in a new deal worth 30% less than the previous contract.
Yahoo is set to bid again for the online highlights. However, it is not clear if the inclusion for the first time of delayed digital rights in the BBC's £180m Match of the Day TV highlights deal last month will have an impact on Yahoo's bid.
As part of the deal, the BBC has the right to play highlights of weekend Premier League matches on the iPlayer from midnight on a Monday. Under the existing deal Yahoo has the exclusive right to clips from midnight on Sunday. This may not be such an issue as it is thought that most online highlights viewing occurs on Mondays.
Google-owned YouTube and Apple are not thought to be likely to wade into the bidding war.
Another industry source said they believed al-Jazeera may be more focused on the upcoming launch of two sports channels in the US and on building rights in markets including Asia and Latin America.
The launch of two channels in the US in August has raised speculation that al-Jazeera might want international Premier League TV rights for the territory. In the last TV rights auction the Premier League netted about £1.4bn for overseas rights.
The US Premier League rights have been held by News Corporation's Fox Sports since 1998, with some sub-licensing to ESPN since August 2009.
Premier League rights in al-Jazeera's home market of the Middle East are held by Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation, BSkyB's partner in Sky News Arabia, the rival service launched in the region in early May.
ADMIC is a private investment firm owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the owner of Manchester City football club.
The only international Premier League TV rights deals that have been done for the three-year period from 2013 so far are for Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Rights in the latter two markets were bought by Modern Times Group, which runs free and pay TV stations in 24 countries and was behind the launch of the Metro newspaper franchise across Europe outside the UK.
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