The Premier League has announced a significant shift in its media operations, which could pave the way for a future over-the-top (OTT) platform. The league will be taking production and distribution of all content for overseas audiences in-house from the 2026-27 season.
This move ends a 20-year relationship with sports marketing agency IMG. The decision was unanimously voted on by the 20 Premier League clubs at an owners’ meeting held last November. This marks a significant rights loss for IMG, which has had this partnership in place with the league under the Premier League Productions (PLP) branding since the late 1990s.
New home for international production
The new international production arm, dubbed 'Premier League Studios', will be housed at Olympia London. PLP is currently based at IMG Studios in Stockley Park and delivers matches and other content to over 180 broadcasters worldwide.
According to Richard Masters, Chief Executive of Premier League, this shift will allow stronger control over content and provide an option should they choose to launch an OTT platform similar to Netflix - already widely christened ‘Premflix’.
Richard Masters, Chief Executive of Premier League, said:
“I’m very much of the view that premium live sport is very valuable to established media entities. When I became chief executive, I was asked the ‘Premflix’ question, and once again, Paul Molnar did a fantastic job of securing another three, in some cases, six, years of deals with media entities, and that is our primary strategy.
“That’s not to say that we’re not developing our own optionality. We’ve been with IMG, who did a fantastic job for us at Stockley for 20 years, Premier League Studios is opening up at Olympia next summer, so we’re putting ourselves in the content supply chain, principally to serve our international broadcast partners, and so that we have a stronger control over content, addressing the audiences, but it also gives us the optionality going forward [to launch an OTT platform].”
“We have also relaunched our digital platforms this summer to get close to fans, building a bigger relationship with the hundreds of millions of Premier League fans that exist around the world. We’re stepping towards that optionality [of a DTC service], but this moment is not on the horizon where there’ll be a switch-on, switch-off moment for the Premier League. It’ll be a mixed economy over time, and who knows when that moment will come.”
Lessons from Ligue 1's media platform
France’s Ligue 1 recently became the first of Europe’s top five leagues to launch an in-house media platform for domestic coverage. Despite being necessitated by challenging media rights landscape rather than innovation, their channel - Ligue 1+ - carrying most weekly games has already attained over one million subscribers within just one month of competition. In recent years, The Premier League has ventured into streaming through a domestic rights deal with Amazon Prime Video during previous three-year cycles. Amazon became the first streaming service to show games in UK during these periods.
However, pay-TV giants Sky and TNT Sports have snapped up domestic rights for the new cycle from 2025-26 to 2028-29, in deals worth £6.4 billion ($8.45 billion). The league has made several changes to what was on offer to broadcasters, including extending the cycle from three seasons to four and increasing the number of live matches per season available from 200 to 270. Sky secured four of the five packages on offer and will air a minimum of 215 live matches per campaign, while TNT will broadcast a minimum of 52 matches annually.
The Premier League's move towards in-house production could be seen as an innovative step towards reaching fans directly and potentially launching their own streaming service in future. This would not only provide stronger control over content but also open up new revenue streams for one of the world's most popular football leagues.
