Premier League Club Broadcasting Monies: The Key Numbers
I had the pleasure of spending some time looking through a number of incredibly impressive and illuminating Swiss Ramble Twitter threads detailing past, present and (projected) future Premier League (EPL) and Champions League (UCL) broadcasting revenue figures. There was some fascinating detail and I wanted to highlight some of the significant numbers involved.
£9.2bn: This is the total figure that broadcasting companies worldwide paid for EPL broadcasting rights in the latest 2019-22 global tender process. Swiss Ramble explains that the domestic rights actually fell 7% from £5.4bn to £5bn with overseas rights soaring 34% to £4.2bn. The recent explosion in the overseas rights revenues has seen the amount paid grow from £59m per year (2001-2004) to £1.4bn per year (2019-2022). The 01-04 revenues accounted for only 11% of the total global broadcasting revenues. Now the overseas revenues are worth 45% of the total broadcasting pie.
£251m: The amount that Liverpool earned from EPL (£152.4m) and UCL (£98.5m) distributions. Swiss Ramble explains that this is “the first time a club has received more than a quarter of a billion pounds from this revenue stream”. Indeed, four clubs including Liverpool are modelled to have earned more than £200m from broadcasting rights revenues in one season (Spurs £235m, Manchester City £233m and Manchester United £225m).
£185m: This is the net per season increase that the EPL clubs will share as a result of the 8% increase in global EPL broadcasting revenues from £8.5bn to £9.2bn.
£171m: All things being equal, this is the figure that the EPL champions will receive come the end of the 2019-2020 season. This is in comparison to the 2018-2019 revenues where Manchester City as champions earned £151m. The quirk of the distributions meant that Liverpool although finishing second earned more (£152.4m) because they were broadcast on domestic UK TV on more occasions. Swiss Ramble’s modelling suggests the Big Six will likely earn an additional £14m-£21m per season from 19-20 season onwards.
£98.5m: The amount Liverpool earned for winning the UCL beating Spurs in the Final in Madrid. This was made up of €15.3m for qualifying for the group stages, €60m from performance prize money, €23.3m based on the UEFA co-efficient ranking (calculated on club performances in UEFA competitions over a ten year period) and €12.7m TV pool allocation (50% calculated on where the club finished in the previous domestic league season and 50% on that year’s UCL performance).
£96.6m: This was the amount that the EPL distributed to the bottom club Huddersfield Town in the 2018-19 season. Every EPL team received £82m (which included 50% of the domestic TV distributions (£34m), an equal share of the overseas TV monies (£43m) and commercial revenues of £5m). Each league position was worth £1.9m to an EPL club (called a merit payment) and each EPL match broadcast live on UK TV was worth £1.1m to an EPL club (with £12.2m guaranteed as a minimum number of games (10)).