NBC Sports Group renewed its deal for the EPL’s U.S. media rights in a precedent-setting six-year deal, beating out competing bids from Fox Sports Group and beIN Sports. To date, the EPL has limited its media-rights deals to three years, but in this round of bidding it opted for NBC’s six-year offer. NBC’s deal, which includes Spanish-language rights for Telemundo and NBC Universo, ensures that NBC will keep EPL rights through the '21-22 season on NBC, NBCSN and USA Network, plus NBC Sports Live Extra. "It gives us nine months of weekend morning and early afternoon programming that has become synonymous with NBC Sports and built what we believe is a real destination for a growing fan base in the U.S.,” NBC Sports Chair Mark Lazarus said on a conference call early this afternoon.
Bids were submitted last Thursday, with the EPL telling bidders that they would not accept any joint bids, meaning that ESPN and Fox would not be allowed to submit a combined bid as they did three years ago. ESPN did not submit a bid for the rights, citing too many conflicts with its college football programming in the fall. Sources say that Univision did not submit a formal bid, either, as Fox Sports and beIN Sports were the only two other networks to submit bids – both submitting three- and six-year bids.
The EPL told the networks that it would not hold a second round of bids if the top bid was at least 15% higher than the next one, which means that NBC’s six-year bid likely is north of $800M, possibly closer to $1B as there was no second round of bidding in this go-round. Neither NBC nor the EPL would disclose financials.
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Lazarus said, “When we made our bid three years ago, we said to
Richard (
Scudamore, EPL Exec Chair), ‘If we’re successful, we know we’re going to have to pay more money to retain these rights.' That has happened.” Because EPL required a broadcast commitment, beIN Sport’s bid included a caveat that it would sublicense rights to an over-the-air broadcaster.
As far as the negotiating window, Lazarus said NBC “worked through the weekend to try to secure the deal.” Lazarus: “We took nothing for granted, but I spent a very anxious Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday until dialogue became clear that we were going to have the ability to negotiate to conclusion.”
Staff Writer Ian Thomas contributed to this story.
