The English Championship team Leeds United recently issued a statement that the team will travel to Myanmar this summer for a warm-up match with its national team. As we all know, the domestic situation in Myanmar has been turbulent recently, and Leeds United's visit was a surprise to fans. Leeds United's new boss Andrea Radrizzani was deemed "unusual" by the team's decision-makers.
Not only that, recently, the owner of Leeds United has also set his sights on the field of event broadcasting - his sports media company Eleven Sports has shown great interest in the Premier League broadcasting rights, and recently decided to acquire the remaining two broadcasts of the Premier League. Packages for bidding.
As an Italian sports media tycoon, Andrea Radrizzani once founded the sports media company MPSilva and sold it after its success. In January 2017, Radrizzani purchased 50% of the shares of the English Championship team Leeds United, and in May he fully purchased the team, gaining full control of Leeds United. Eleven Sports is another sports media company owned by Radrizzani, focusing on live events.
In the public bidding held in February this year, because the quotations from each broadcast company did not reach the psychologically expected price of the Premier League, the ownership of the two broadcast packages has not yet been determined. Eleven Sports believes that this is an excellent opportunity to enter the Premier League broadcast market. The two broadcast packages are limited in number, so the cost is not high. The company intends to share the big pie of the Premier League at a lower price.
The Premier League named these two broadcast packages F package and G package, which contain a total of 40 games. Package F mainly contains 10 mid-week games and 10 games held on public holidays; package G consists entirely of mid-week events, also totaling 20 games. Among the 10 public holiday games, at least 4 game times are completely staggered, and broadcasters can broadcast them continuously; as for mid-week games, the kick-off times are mainly between 7:30 and 8:15 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. There will be some overlap, and there will also be some games that kick off at the same time, requiring broadcasters to make trade-offs.
However, the Premier League has recently launched game replay rights. Any company that obtains ownership of the broadcast package can obtain the video of the game immediately after the game ends. The company can use various channels for recording and broadcasting, which to a certain extent avoids the trouble of being unable to broadcast the same session and recovers losses for broadcasters.
Currently, Eleven Sports has not announced its broadcast method. According to industry analysis, the company may create a new TV channel or online live broadcast platform, and may also distribute events to Sky Sports, BT Sports or other TV stations and online live broadcast platforms.
As a sports media company, Eleven Sports has made some achievements in the field of event broadcasting. The company signed a three-year contract with the La Liga League and obtained the rights to broadcast La Liga matches in Belgium, Poland, the United Kingdom and Ireland . This contract will officially take effect from next season. Their competitor in the UK is Sky Sports, which has cooperated with La Liga for more than 20 years. However, this time's offer of 54 million pounds was still defeated by Eleven Sports. For Sky Sports, they are losing a lot of money in the foreign sports broadcast market. According to data from
Eleven Sports, the last two Spanish national derbies attracted more than 1 million British fans to watch. After obtaining the British broadcast rights of La Liga, if the company can further obtain two Premier League broadcast packages, it will be extremely beneficial to its development in the UK.
For Sky Sports and BT Sports, although they have won the broadcast rights for most of the Premier League weekend matches at a sky-high price of 4.464 billion pounds, they still need to be vigilant. Eleven Sports, which holds the UK broadcast rights for La Liga, has unlimited potential and is likely to become a rising star in the football broadcast industry.
