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Foreign sales of Premier League games set to hit $1.5b a year 2016-2019


Sales of overseas television rights for the U.K.’s Premier League soccer are set to jump by 50 percent for the 2016-2019 period, with a significant portion coming from Asia, according to an estimate by the U.K.’s Mail on Sunday.

The Premier League are close to completing the sale of overseas TV rights for 2016-19, which are likely to add up to GBP 3.2 billion ($4.7 billion) for those three years. That compares with less than GBP 8 million  a year from selling live rights when the league began in 1992-93.

The 2016-2019 rights include a $1 billion six-year package with NBC, a doubling of rights values in Scandinavia and Hong Kong; bumper deals across the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa; and a huge leap in France.

The last 'major' market, India, should be completed in the coming weeks, when a deal worth just under GBP100 million for 2013-16 is expected to jump significantly, it said.

The price of rights has just doubled in Hong Kong. The current 2013-16 holders NowTV paid $200m and that has been doubled by Chinese entertainment firm LeTV, who will pay $400m for 2016-19, the report said.

Thailand is one of the rare places where the rights values have gone down. But with interest in the country verging on the hysterical at times, it remains one of the most lucrative markets anyway, the Mail says. For 2016-19, beIN Sports will be paying GBP197 million over three years.

While the market in China remains relatively small in television terms, a recent deal by a Chinese consortium to pay GBP 265 million  for a 13 per cent stake in Manchester City's parent company could help City to 'crack' the notoriously difficult Chinese market, it adds.

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