Netflix has made an explosive entrance into the world of sports after acquiring the rights to major events such as WWE’s weekly “Monday Night Raw,” plus an NFL Christmas Day doubleheader and the next two women’s soccer World Cups. And that’s alongside boxing matches such as the recent Canelo Álvarez vs. Terence Crawford fight and the much-hyped Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul bout last November.
But it’s yet to follow in the muddy footsteps of fellow streamer Amazon Prime Video and enter the race for one of the most coveted sports packages around: the English Premier League, considered the world’s most popular and most-watched soccer league.
For Adam Kelly, the president of IMG Media, it’s really only a matter of time before Netflix joins the fray.
“Why wouldn’t they?” he said, speaking to Variety from the sidelines of the recently-concluded IMG x RedBird Summit in the U.K. “They’re the biggest media company in the world. They’re not yet in the trillion dollar club, but I bet my bottom dollar they will be. So why would they not?”
As Kelly noted, the English Premier League is “one of, if not the biggest and best sports assets in the world” and having it in multi-territories would be an “incredibly powerful” get.
As for the form any Netflix involvement in EPL programming might take, he admits he’s not sure. “But if they wouldn’t be considering one of the biggest and best sports assets with the trajectory they’re on and the impact they’ve had and the results they’ve had today, I’d be very surprised.”
EPL broadcast rights are currently split between Sky Sports and TNT Sports in the U.K. until the end of 2028/29 season (with Sky taking the lion’s share of 215 matches per season in an overall agreement that worth more than $9 billion). Amazon Prime, which had shown 20 matches per season as part of a six-year deal that began in 2018, is now no longer involved. In the U.S., where the popularity of soccer and the EPL is steadily soaring, NBC in 2021 renewed its EPL deal with a six-year agreement worth $2.7 billion that runs until 2028, almost double what it paid for the previous six-year arrangement thanks to fierce competition from CBS and ESPN.
Netflix still has some time yet before these coveted rights go back under the hammer, but the recent and dramatic arrival of streamers into live sports in general has proven such a success that it’s only set to grow exponentially, predicts Kelly.
“Some of the stats that we’re seeing are incredible. YouTube set a record for their NFL game. Netflix keeps setting record after record after record. Both of these guys have been dipping their toe in the water, but having such rapid results that they’re accelerating faster than they thought,” he said.
