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PREMFLIX: The Premier League reveals plans to develop Netflix-style streaming service to revolutionise how English football is consumed

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A Netflix-like streaming service from the Premier League could be on its way

The league's new CEO Richard Masters' plans could revolutionise live football

It could benefit clubs through increased revenue and fans via lower prices

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The Premier League is working on plans to launch a Netflix-style digital streaming channel, selling live games direct to fans, new CEO Richard Masters has revealed.

Trials of a new 'Over The Top' (OTT) service that cuts out traditional broadcasters could start as early as 2022, in select test markets overseas. If successful, it could revolutionise the way football is consumed.

'During the last [rights bidding] process [for the 2019-22 seasons] we spent quite a lot of time and invested a lot of resources in building our expertise and capacity in 'direct-to-consumer',' said Masters.

'We considered whether strategically it would be the right time to test a few markets then and decided not to. We were ready last time and we will be ready next time should the opportunity arise. Eventually the Premier League will move to a mix of direct-to-consumer and [traditional] media rights sales.'

Masters' confirmation that the League will pursue OTT as part of its strategy via 'PremFlix' or whatever it is branded, should benefit the top-flight clubs through increased broadcasting revenue and fans, possibly, via lower prices.

Currently any viewer in the UK who wants to watch every Premier League game legally needs to subscribe to Sky, BT Sport and Amazon Prime. Paying for all three typically costs about £912 a year, or £76 a month. PremFlix is probably still a long way off in the UK but would be much cheaper than that.



The enduring value of Premier League content to 'legacy' broadcasters was underlined in stunning fashion on Thursday when it was announced that a Stockholm-based media group, NENT, has bought Nordic rights for 2022-28 inclusive for £2billion.

NENT will have exclusive rights for six years to show Premier League games in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The £2bn is equivalent to paying £74 for each of the 27 million men, women and children living in those four countries combined.

But looked at another way, fans in those countries typically pay £40-£45 per month for access to channels currently showing live Premier League football. And if three million households across the Nordic nations combined did so at those prices in 2022-28, revenues would be £8bn-£9bn. The rights are highly likely to pay for themselves several times over.

Therein lies the allure, theoretically at least, of a PremFlix where the Premier League keeps all the revenue. As things stand, games are shown live in 188 countries, with about 200 million households globally using pay-TV for access.

More watch free-to-air. And the League earns just over £3bn per year from all broadcast rights, with £1.665bn from domestic rights (Sky, BT, Amazon, the BBC for MOTD) and £1.4bn from all foreign rights.

Purely for illustrative purposes, imagine all the 200 million global households paid £10 a month for PremFlix instead of generally much larger fees they are paying now to whoever their 'legacy' broadcaster is. The League's current £3bn per year earnings become £24bn a year.



It goes without saying there are caveats, lots of them. The price point would differ in different markets. It might be a few pounds in places and considerably more than £10 in others.

A truly global and successful PremFlix would need to be not just one channel but dozens, in different languages and catering to local, familiar tastes in presenters, pundits and commentators.

Arguably the biggest hurdle is the League would need to transform from being merely the organiser of 380 football matches per season into a global broadcasting Goliath.

It would need to build and maintain a complex tech platform that can smoothly serve a whole planet without glitches. It would need to deal directly with hundreds of millions of customers in hugely diverse continents, languages and cultures.

This will not happen swiftly and not at all without the League taking some big risks.

The League's current way of selling rights is simple and easy: broadcasters pay large sums for rights and take on all the hard work of marketing them, selling them and making sure they work for their viewers. The League banks the money and this is known as a 'secure funding' model.

A PremFlix set-up by contrast is a direct-to-consumer model (or D2C), with no guarantees — once you have built your infrastructure and customer services department and sales team and so on — that you will attract enough customers to break even, let alone make vast profits.

'There is risk associated with it,' Masters says of PremFlix. 'The Premier League has been successful by seeking partnerships with established broadcasters and having secure funding as its model, as opposed to direct consumer revenue, which is an entirely different strategy. The transition from one to the other if and when it ever happens would be a big moment.'

So what next? Possible OTT trials in locations still being considered. Masters will make no comment on where they might be but it is believed the League came close to a trial in Singapore for 2019-22 before deciding not to risk it.

The maths in Singapore shows the potential for PremFlix reward. Current rights holder Singtel pays about £70m a year for those rights and sells games via channels costing £34 a month to more than 425,000 people, earning about £175m in revenues.

The OTT opportunity lies in the £105m difference between the £70m and the £175m. The risk is many fewer people sign up and with costly expenses, the League ends up worse off, not better off.

Whether the Premier League takes the Singapore gamble from 2022 remains to be seen but it opened its first international office there last year. Masters will not comment but joint venture trials are one possibility, with established tech platforms taking some of the risk (costs) and sharing some of the profits.

Masters speaks of working with 'internal and external expertise and investment' as the League plots a course.

It might be that another territory is deemed a better testing ground, perhaps a nation fanatical about football with a huge population and one that does not earn the Premier League huge sums. Indonesia, with 270 million people but where the rights are currently worth 10s of millions of pounds per year now, not hundreds, ticks all boxes.

A million customers paying £10 a month PremFlix Indonesia would see revenues of £120m a year. Ten million would net £1.2bn. The potential is as clear as the dangers. The PremFlix story is only just beginning. In this rapidly evolving era, everything is up for grabs.

Everybody wants to watch the big games. There is a danger that in watching the ££€€$$ roll in that the PL take their eye off the ball.

I am lazy when it comes to TV packages so I have Sky and subscribe to BT sport to watch our live games. I am too much of a technophobe to stream stuff illegally and any game of ours not on live I keep in touch with through Sky Soccer Saturday where I can enjoy a punt on lots of matches and see my selections succeed or fail.

I worry that the PL will screw things up by setting even more challenging fixture lists in order to increase revenue.

The Netflix coverage was surprisingly good and showed how much they had picked up from other broadcasters and how they could add their own features to it. So I have no worries about programme content.

I think some of the groundwork for this move has already been done. We have seen Friday night football and even a couple of Saturday night games. Testing the markets I suppose.

I am sure we'll all adapt one way or the other, necessity is the mother of invention they say, we will see

I pay for Sky TV, it is abit annoying to pay the inflated price and not have any control on which games I can watch, I'm amazed when I goto the US and they have things like premier league pass where they show all the games live, so you choose which you want to watch, so it would be much better to move to that, like when the games were shown live on Prime over Xmas.

The argument against it was that it could affect game attendances if it was on TV, but places like Anfield will always sell out anyway, the clubs do not rely on gate receipts like they used to, with the increased revenues from TV deals I am sure they can make up for any shortfall on the likes of Burnleys gate receipts!

The danger is if clubs start doing their own TV deals, where the likes of Liverpool & Man Utd could have huge deals due to their global fallowing, whereas a team like Burnley or Norwich would get small TV deals as they have only a local fan base. I think this is what happened in Spain and skewed their league as the big teams Barca & RM got so much more from TV revenue.

I don't think it would affect our attendances but it would affect attendances of other games being played at the same time. For this reason I doubt if we will see our own TV deals or 3pm kick offs on a Saturday being made available in this way.

Depending on how they split the share I can definitely see a lot of push back on this. Liverpool games have been the most aired "live" games in the PL in the past 5 years so this could affect revenue in a big way.

What's stopping the likes of Liverpool and other big clubs setting up their own "live" game streaming service? it will cut out the middle men like Sky, BT, Amazon and Netflix trying to profit.

Don't think they can do that as the rights belong to the EPL and you need all the teams to have a league. N Spain they gave way to Barca and Real but I think other clubs could have done something about it.

Things may change if a European league is created and right from the beginning all clubs would have their own tv rights, this could put pressure on the EPL to review.

I read something about this 5 or 6 years ago so don't know how it worked then or if it is still the same in Spain. But basically the gist of it was that there was £1.7bn in the pot from TV for La Liga. Barcelona and RM had a whacking 90℅ of this between them with the other 10℅ split between the other 18 clubs.

Would explain how they are financially light years ahead of everyone else in Spain and how impossible it is for anyone else to mount a sustained challenge although At.Madrid try as hard as they can.

It's not as bad now, those 2 teams get 30% of the pot

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/barcelona-real-madrid-la-liga-tv-money