📺 The Premier League Streaming Service Inches Closer

Last week The Ferdinand Group, an investment company owned by Rio Ferdinand acquired a minority stake in Koora Break, a Middle Eastern sports network

Koora Break is a sports platform that boasts 800 million users a month. It is also the fastest-growing football app in the Middle East and North Africa.

Financials of the deal were not announced but the press release revealed it was a “multi million dollar” investment by TFG and that the money would be used to expand it’s library of content across Europe and the MENA region.

Rio is lining up a massive content push ahead of the Saudi World Cup in 2034. He has rebranded his YouTube content away from the FIVE brand he had originally built. He now has vested interest in a massive media engine in the Middle East.

Content distribution is two-thirds of the content game and he now has a fantastic way to do that at scale internationally.

The man is stacking the deck in a major way and I like what I’m seeing.

Interestingly, the Premier League are maybe about to do the same…

For the first time since its inception the Premier League will make more money outside of the UK than it will from its own domestic market. Across the four years from 2025- 2028 the revenue distribution will look like this:

• Premier League Domestic Broadcast Revenue: £1.67bn a year

• Premier League International Broadcast Revenue: £2.16bn a year

Underpinning all of that international revenue is a company called Premier League Productions (PLP), a venture established in 2004 by the league and media agency IMG, tasked with managing the Premier Leagues international output.

IMG and the Premier League do a lot of work together. Studio-based content, fan-focused agenda shows and magazine programming are just a starting point. They also package classic games and made a lot of content for the League’s global media partners.

In an interesting turn of events, the Premier League have decided to end its partnership with IMG, making a move to operate PLP internally.

The Premier League has been a behemoth for many years largely and its done it without getting its hands dirty.

As you can see, IMG create international production content. BSkyB broadcast the content domestically. VAR is managed and operated by Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd. The League has found a way to create this monster with a fantastic range of outsourced partners to help them do it.

Until now…

Ending the relationship with IMG has a few connotations. The first is that it will now cost less to create the content meaning more money in the coffers for the PL. It also now has far more control over the content in every market in the world. They can shape the narrative and the production however they choose.

The con however, is that the Premier League will have to do it all themselves. They will have to hire the talent (probably pay to keep the IMG talent!). Create the studios. Develop the broadcast relationships and foster the technology all in-house.

You and I will likely not see a difference any time soon, but if they get this wrong it can lead to a shift for the league that they will hope to avoid.

Many think this is the first step to launching the Netflix-style Premier League Streaming Service. Doing that will be a costly and timely venture which the Premier League have seemingly avoided for a long time. The first domino however, may have just fallen to make that a reality.

Lets see what happens from here!

To close, we turn our attentions to our comrades in the Middle East.

Play the Game is a business run by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies (Idan) that “aims at raising the ethical standards of sport”.

They recently released a very comprehensive study into the Saudi Arabian takeover in global sport, listing ALL the sponsorships, investments and personnel involved in their regime.

The takeaways from the report were fascinating. To save you the legwork I have summarised five of the more interesting ones to me here:

1. There are currently 910 sponsorship projects in place currently, 346 of them led by the PIF

2. PIF bought majority control of the league’s four biggest clubs Al-Ahli, Al-Ittihad, Al-Hilal, and Al-Nassr. I did not know this previously

3. Aramco’s deal to become a “major worldwide partner” of FIFA cost $600m (£470m). It’s only a 4-year deal

4. The Newcastle acquisition has cost at least £500m so far. (£305m purchase price, extensive legal fees, the purchase of players since the takeover, and sponsors at the club Sela and airline partner Saudia)

5. The cost of Jon Rahm to LIV Golf is £395m so far 😮‍💨

The crazy thing is, the regime is just beginning. Scary to think what the cost to host the 2034 Saudi World Cup will be.

More on that in the months to come.

See you next week.