The English Premier League sold its TV rights in China for about $700 million (or approximately €660 million at today’s exchange rate), they revealed yesterday evening to the international news agencies starting with the Associated Press.
PPTV streaming platform, owned since September 2013 by Suning Group, the same company that holds Inter majority (it was founded in 2004 and in nine years it saw its value increase to $727 million) won the bid.
The three-year agreement is the largest ever signed abroad by the Premier League. Previously the record was held by the US group NBC.
This deal multiplied by 12 times the previous $17 million commercial value of the Premier League in China.
The deal is not official yet and the Premier League has not confirmed, while PPTV – which in China is among the major streaming services – declined to comment.
If everything is as it seems the Premier League will receive €220 million per season starting from the 2019-2020 only from the Chinese market. This figure in only one country is higher than the amount that our Serie A gets around the whole world (€180 million).
At the moment, the Premier League holds the richest contracts in the world in the distribution of rights abroad. In particular, the most significant are the $1 billion distributed in seven seasons for the US market (previous record), or in other words $167 million per season.
$133 million comes instead from Hong Kong where the three-year contract was signed for $400 million per year. Same amount for the Middle East and North Africa, while in France the three-year contract is worth $110 million per year.
It’s fair to remember that in contrast to the national TV rights, the foreign rights of the Premier League are divided into equal parts to the clubs, thus every club gets 1/20. In essence, if a single club was previously taking $0.85 million from the Chinese market, it will now earn $10.2 million.
