Optus Sport extends lucrative EPL rights until 2028
Optus Sport has ended speculation over the broadcast rights for the English Premier League retaining it for six additional seasons through to the end of the 2027-28 competition, after the bidding concluded this week.
Optus has also retained the rights for the FA Women’s Super League until the end of the 2023-24 season. Optus first won the EPL rights in 2015 from Foxtel, retaining it in 2018.
The race for one of the most valuable sporting competitions in the world was shaping up to be hotly contested, with the saturated sports streaming market in Australia resulting in interest from multiple players. The news comes on launch date of the new A-League Men’s competition, with new broadcast partners, Ten ViacomCBS.
Optus CEO, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said: “We are thrilled to be able to significantly extend our exclusive partnership with Premier League and the FA Women’s Super League and continue to bring the best football coverage to more than a million of our passionate and loyal Optus Sport customers.”
The new contract is predicted to be worth around $80 million annually, which will see the local telco broadcast all 380 games live on its online platform.
Clive Dickens, VP of TV, content and product development at Optus said: “In the six years since securing the exclusive Premier League rights, Optus Sport has become the undisputed home of premium European football and has introduced new Australian audiences to the game whilst setting the benchmark on live sports streaming.”
Dickens
“Optus Sport has more than doubled its subscribers since 2018, engagement is up over 49% year-on-year and we’ve seen nine of our top ten most watched matches occurring during 2021. This includes the historic Euro 2020 England vs Italy Final, which broke the Australian record for a live sports streaming event, with almost one million households watching the match live, no single streamed Tokyo Olympic event reached this many households.”
Bayer Rosmarin continued: “This is another proof point that we are continuing to deliver unique customer experiences and exceptional value for our Mobile and Home customers, in addition to our industry-leading Living Network, Australia’s fastest 5G, and our newly launched SubHub, a revolutionary subscription aggregation platform.”
Chief media officer for the English Premier League, Paul Molnar said that the EPL was pleased to extend its partnership with Optus for a further six years.
“Optus has proven to be an outstanding home for the Premier League in Australia and has helped to grow the fan base of the Premier League and its clubs through market-leading content and impressive innovation. We are looking forward to continuing to work with Optus in the years ahead,” he said.
Ten ViacomCBS’ sports sales director, Nick Bower, told Mumbrella last week that the network would focus on “getting this one (A-Leagues) right first”, before making a play for the Premier League rights, ahead of tonight’s season launch.
With industry talk that Ten ViacomCBS would make a play for the rights, Optus Sport’s win means that football coverage in Australia will remain fragmented, with the aforementioned holds the rights to the Matildas, Socceroos, A-League and W-League, while Stan Sports won the rights to the Champions League from Optus this year.
This leaves football fans in Australia having to shell out $14.99 for Optus, $10 for Stan Sport (available only to Stan subscribers) and $8.99 for Paramount+, should they want to subscribe to each.
On the Mumbrellacast last month, Ten ViacomCBS executive vice president and chief content officer, Beverley McGarvey said that the network “looks at everything” in regards to upcoming sports rights, and that with all the big sports rights that become available, “every player here would have a serious look at everything”.
This comes on the same morning that the Premier League extended its broadcast rights in the United States with NBC for six additional years, with the deal totalling US$2.7 billion (A$3.7 billion).
Optus Sport also reported this morning that it currently has over one million active subscribers.
Optus introduced a new content subscriptions and membership hub for its customers, Optus SubHub in August, as Dickens, said at the time SubHub was designed to solve “subscription fatigue”.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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