Sources: Man City in line to bank £45m amid new behind-the-scenes Premier League twist
Top clubs like Man City could bank approximately £45million over the course of the next Premier League TV if Sky Sports’ plans to combat piracy are successful, Football Insider has learned.
Sources have told this site that Sky officials estimate that they are losing a 10-15 per cent share of domestic viewership to illegal streaming.
The broadcast titans are formulating new plans to revamp their products from next season in a bid to attract new subscribers who currently access their content via illicit platforms.
Man City, who won the Premier League for a fourth time in five seasons in 2021-22, earned £164m from the division’s central pot last term, with most of that cash coming directly from Sky.
Our analysis shows that a 10-15 per cent uptake in viewers would mean City could theoretically earn an extra £45m over the course of the next three-year TV deal should the top flight choose to renegotiate with Sky on that basis.
The current deal is worth £4.8billion and expires at the end of the 2024-25 campaign.
Football Insider exclusively revealed in December last year that the Premier League was plotting a massive crackdown on piracy stemming from the Asia-Pacific region.
Police visited 1,000 homes in the UK the following month in a campaign against illegal streaming via IPTV services.
Critics argue that the Premier League, which is more expensive to watch in the UK than it is anywhere else in the world, should lower its prices if it wants to attract larger legitimate audiences.
The bulk of the season’s matches are broadcast via Sky, whose cheapest in-house sports package costs more than £30 per month.
BT Sport and Amazon are the other domestic broadcasters, and the reported interest of DAZN and Apple TV among other OTT services in domestic Premier League rights will likely raise the price of the next TV deal.
That cost would almost certainly be passed on to the consumer, according to industry analysts.
In other news, Barcelona lay groundwork for deal for Man City star Rodri as £80m bid mooted.