Sky to claw back £330m from sports cancellations ahead of Premier League restart
Sky is set to receive rebates of up to £330m from organisers of leading sporting events, as the broadcaster seeks to shore up its balance sheet after months of cancelled events.
The Premier League has agreed to return £170m to Sky, the Financial Times reported, after the UK broadcaster allowed customers to halt sports subscriptions during the lockdown.
The rebate is one of many being negotiated by Sky in a bid to “mitigate the impact on our business [from] the lack of live sport over the past 12 weeks”, said Sky Sports managing director Rob Webster.
The repayments will be deferred until next season to assist clubs facing a funding drought from a lack of live ticketed events. Football fans will still be unable to attend the Premier League in person when it restarts tomorrow, but will instead be available on free-to-air TV and non-paywalled versions of subscription channels.
Sky has also been in negotiations to receive rebates from organisers of English cricket, Formula One, and other sporting events. The broadcaster spent billions securing exclusive screening rights for events that were cancelled or postponed due to the coronavirus crisis.
“The vast majority of [rebate] conversations have reached a conclusion where the sport itself is able to continue to thrive and to have funding certainty over the short to medium term,” said Webster.
It comes as major sporting events will return to TV this week, following pressure from the UK government.
Sky will show 35 of the total 92 Premier League games on its free-to-view Pick channel. Four matches will be shown on the BBC, marking the first time Premier League games will be screened on terrestrial TV since the competition’s launch in 1992.
Frozen Sky Sports accounts will be reactivated to coincide with the Premier League’s return, and the broadcaster will offer viewers the option of simulated crowd noise.
But it also warned that free broadcasting of sports events is unlikely to become a regular occurrence.
“The starting point in all our discussions on rights centres around the nature of exclusivity because that is what drives our business,” Webster told the Financial Times, noting the exceptional circumstances that led to matches being aired for free this season.
Analysts have argued that the financial fallout from the pandemic will likely cause broadcasters to spend loss on rights in the future. In the last Premier League screening rights auction, broadcasting giants Sky, BT and Amazon paid a combined total of £5bn to screen matches in the UK between 2019 and 2022.
Sky did not respond to requests for comment.