A leading Premier League club executive believes Facebook and Amazon will enter the fray for the next round of English Premier League bidding rights, which opens later this year.
Manchester United executive vice chairman Ed Woodward, who has operational responsibility for the club, told a quarterly investor’s call the tech giants were interested in the last round and pointed to other sports where they have picked up rights.
“Absolutely, I think they will enter the mix,” Woodward said. “Anecdotally, there was incredibly strong interest in the last cycle. We are hearing that around the Premier League table and we are also hearing that from a European perspective in terms of interest in the Champions League and Europa rights.
“I do think we are going to see an increasing engagement from these and we would welcome the interest.”
Woodward said Facebook and Amazon were interested in the last round of rights deals for 2016-19, which were sold primarily to BSkyB and BT for £8.4 billion.
Woodward noted Amazon now streams an NFL game on Thursdays and that Major League Soccer has a deal with Facebook to show 22 games a season.
Recently, Facebook is reported to have tabled a $610 million bid for the streaming rights to the Indian Premier League, which eventually lost to News Corp’s Star Asia’s $2.5 billion for the exclusive rights across multiple channels.
Amazon recently picked up the £10 million UK rights to the ATP tour and Twitter has been involved in several sports, most notably the NFL in the US.
In Australia, Twitter partnered with Seven to stream last year’s Melbourne Cup on the platform.
Seven West Media chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette tells AdNews the network is concerned about tech giants “pinching” Australian sports and that the government needs to consider expanding anti-siphoning laws.
Woodward said he welcomed extra competition, which would massively inflate the value of sports rights, some of which is distributed to football clubs.
Of Manchester United’s £515 million in revenue in FY17, broadcast revenue was £194.1 million, up 38.2% on FY16, while sponsorship up 2.7% to £275.5 million.
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