Amazon not bothered about EPL 🥱, transformers on the pitch 🤖, and Indian mega-events 🏟️

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📺 PREMIER LEAGUE’S BIG PAYDAY

The Premier league this week signed £6.7Bn domestic rights deal for the four-year period starting in 2025, and a lot has been said about it.

Here are the key points you need to know…

• Whilst the headline figure is higher than the previous deal, the deal is stretched out over 4 years rather than the previous 3, and more games will be televised each season, which leads to a drop in the per-game revenue. Is this a sign the broadcast market is topping out?

Luis Vicente covered this in his post:

Carlo De Marchis also had a good take on it:

The surprise for many was how dominant Sky would be, taking 4 out of the 5 packages on offer and leaving DAZN and Amazon with… nothing.

SportsPro CEO Nick Meacham gave a good breakdown on what this means:

• It’s great for fans, who only need two channels to watch all the televised games (218 on Sky alone, 52 on TNT)

• DAZN were simply priced out of the bidding (there were no ‘small’ packages this time around)

• The ever-savvy Amazon surely had the resources to bid, but chose not to increase their investment from last time.

• Part of the reason Sky were successful is that they bring a huge amount to the table beyond just the financing. They essentially do the Premier League’s marketing for them…

My favourite take came from Unofficial Partner, who explain that Amazon had simply wrung all of the value they could from the last two cycles. They’ve got all of the data they need, and signed up all the Prime customers they can, and saw no reason to invest in a much larger and most expensive deal than they previously had.

🔔 The real bellwether will come when the Premier League announces the winners for the corresponding international rights deals, as that will give a sense of how much the league’s international audience is growing, and how healthy the global appetite for media rights is.

🚀 PSG TO THE MOON?

US investment group Arctos Partners has purchased a minority stake (said to be 12.5%) in QSI-owned fashion brand Paris Saint-Germain.

The deal values PSG (which also operates a football team) at $4 billion.

Per Forbes, this ranks them higher than Tottenham and Arsenal, but less than Bayern Munich.

It’s around $1.4Bn less than Boehly & Co paid for entertainment brand Chelsea (which also, co-incidentally, operates a football team).

Why would Qatar Sports Investments want to sell? Are they getting bored of their investments? And why would Arctos want to invest in a team that (a) consistently fails in Europe and (b) is so utterly reliant on one individual?

These are the big questions…

• Well, Arctos is not like many other sports investors who take ego-boosting majority positions in a few prize sports assets.

• Typically, they buy small, minority stakes in businesses.

• They currently have stakes in over 20 sports properties, including multiple teams in each of the NHL, MLB, and NBA leagues.

• Their strategy revolves not around owning clubs but around creating synergies across their portfolio. Having worked with, and provided services to, so many teams, Arctos can bring a wealth of insights, data, and networks (and likely a fair few cost synergies) across all of their investee brands.

Some of the statements around the announcement are telling. Given Arctos’s experience working with so many sports brands in the American market, and PSG’s focus on becoming a global brand (as opposed to, say, winning the Champions League), the investment begins to make a lot of sense.

If you are interested in reading more about PSG, here is a breakdown explaining how PSG became arguably football’s most fashionable club:

🤖 SPONSORSHIP DEAL OF THE WEEK!

In the tie-up that no one knew they needed, Italian giants Internazionale have teamed up with Transformers (the film franchise is distributed by Inter’s usual shirt sponsor, Paramount)

The deal will include a limited edition shirt design for this weekend's match against Udinese, as well as real-life transformers present on the sidelines to ‘create a unique experience for fans.’

The shirts sold out within hours.

The initiative will help promote the upcoming film ‘Transformers One’, and is another example of sponsors and rights-holders going beyond formulaic deals to create more innovative and talked-about campaigns.

🏅OLYMPIC GAMES IN INDIA?

In a world where many countries are either shut out of bidding processes or simply disinterested in the huge expense that comes with hosting mega-events like the World Cup or Olympics, India might be an exception.

Fresh off hosting the Cricket World Cup, India is looking towards a bid to host the 2036 Summer Olympics.

In fact, this was the main topic of discussion at Leader Meet India.

As the Leaders team discuss in their podcast, India’s government has made some defiantly nationalistic noises and seems willing to use major sporting events to drum up public support, whilst the IOC (along with many other rights holders) would love to penetrate the world's most populous country.

Who knows, maybe we will soon be talking about an Indian FIFA World Cup bid?

🐝 BEDTIME READING…

It’s December, and that means only one thing…

Get ready to gorge yourself on non-stop ‘trends for next year’ articles.

IMG’s Digital Trends 2024, report is out, and it's worth a five-minute flick through.

Spoiler alert – AI.

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