What Will Premier League Plus Mean for the Future of the League’s Broadcasting?

With the Premier League expected to roll out Premier League Plus from the 2026/27 season in Singapore, we look at why the league is going direct-to-consumer with its own streaming platform for the first time, and what it could mean for the future of the league’s broadcasting model.

‍ By Maxwell Kablan

The Premier League has continued to reach new heights since its creation in 1992. As the most-watched and followed football league worldwide, the league has been and continues to be a great commercial success.

Its TV Rights have played a large part in that. The Premier League is the only football league worldwide that earns more from its overseas TV rights than it does domestically (with the league bringing in £2.1bn internationally compared to £1.67 in the UK).

Despite this success, this hasn’t stopped the league from experimenting with new ways to innovate and attract new fans. And at the end of February, the Premier League CEO Richard Masters dropped a bombshell that could reshape how the league is broadcast. He announced exclusively that the Premier League would be going direct-to-consumer with their own streaming service Premier League Plus, in Singapore from the 2026/27 season.

While there had been suggestions for several years about the league starting its very own ‘Premflix’, this was the first time it was made official with a timeline, location and clear strategy. So why is the league starting its own streaming service, and what does this mean for the league’s broadcasting model?

Having more control over their content and distribution

One of the main drivers for the league choosing to go direct-to-consumer is to have more control over its content and distribution. The league sells its broadcasting rights to external broadcasters, who show matches, highlights and clips at their disposal.

That creates a barrier when it comes to control, as they give up distribution to their broadcast partners. In the UK for example, Sky Sports has the lion’s share of the league’s rights live packages with 215 matches per season, while TNT Sports shows 52 matches per season. BBC has the rights for free-to-air highlights.

While these agreements bring in immense and sustained commercial revenue, it often means the league has to go through these broadcasters for its content rather than going alone. And it’s therefore harder for the league to track its viewers’ habits and activity.

Going direct-to-consumer allows the league to effectively have their own customers, log and manage their activity and tailor recommendations and suggestions to match their interests. For example, it will allow the league to own first party data, viewing habits, team loyalties, device preferences and engagement depth. Richard Masters described how this will allow them to experiment with pricing, promotion and distribution in the Singapore market.

And the pathway for the league to do so is greater now than ever before. Earlier this season, the Premier League announced from next season, they will be taking their production in-house by creating Premier League Studios. This will put an end to IMG’s 20-year status as the league’s sole content producer.

This reflects the league’s clear commitment to taking a more controlled approach to ownership. With the new production pipeline already ready and in place, the league’s streaming service serves as a logical next step, and a tangible way to carry this out.

The league is transitioning from a rights seller to essentially being a fully integrated media company, and Premier League Plus will give them the leverage to build the foundations to do so.

Clampdown on piracy while offering exclusive matches in one place

Another key driver for the league starting its own streaming service is to clampdown on piracy, and to allow games to be shown in one place. The league’s choice of rolling out the service in Singapore is deliberate. The market is particularly heavy on illegal streaming, so it will allow them to offer a service to fans that is more affordable, therefore reducing the need for fans to stream.

The league has been adamant on reducing piracy in Singapore, having recently blocked 47 illegal streaming sites in the country through the High Court. Since 2020, they have blocked over 800 of these domains in Singapore and 30,000 sites in Asia.

Having already opened an office in Singapore in 2019 and with the high piracy in the region, the rationale behind Premier League Plus would allow fans to have access to games all under one platform. 

Crucially, this is an issue the league faces not only in Singapore but globally. The league is watched in 920 million homes globally, but how many of these are legitimate?

In the UK for example, the number of a illegal sports streams has risen to 3.6bn over the last 3 years. For the Premier League, this rise in both domestic and international streaming significantly harms the value of their broadcast rights potential.

The rising costs and fragmentation of the Premier League is what drives fans to find ways to stream matches without paying these high costs.  Fans have to pay extortionate prices to watch the Premier League, and in some markets, need a subscription to multiple broadcasters. In the UK, it can cost viewers between £47 and £65.99 per month to have both Sky Sports and TNT Sports depending on the package. And this still won’t give fans access to all Premier League games.

The league still hasn’t lifted its 3pm blackout in UK, where all games shown at 3pm are not televised. It was designed to protect attendances of lower league audiences, yet it in the UK in particular, it has led to fans finding alternative means of watching the games.

Turning attention back to Singapore, if Premier League Plus drives significant sign-ups in the country and is rolled out to other markets, this does two things: 1) allows them to generate greater return from their broadcast value and 2) allows fans to watch games in one place, which could make watching the league more affordable.

How will it work and how can the league experiment with it?

In his talk at the FT Business of Football Summit, Richard Masters mentioned that the league plans to introduce the service as an app, which can be downloaded on TVs, laptops and phones. It will include all 380 matches per season on the platform, and he also suggested it would include shoulder content, implying a desire to include pre-match and post-match content, interviews and behind-the-scenes content.

Crucially, it marks an opportunity for the league to go above and beyond what Premier League Productions already does. At the moment, Premier League Productions already includes studio-based content, fan focused agenda shows, magazine programming, classic matches and long-form storytelling.

With a dedicated Premier League Studios on the horizon, the league is in a better place to experiment with new features to drive engagement and reach fans in new ways, while also rolling out its existing features to fans under the platform.

For live matches there’s an opportunity for the league to broadcast games where fans can choose from multiple camera angles, commentary styles, and seeing real-time data of players and teams during matches. Using a mix of video, audio and interactive content, as seen with leagues such as the Bundesliga, the NFL and the NBA, could be a great way to tailor to different viewers and generate new fanbases.

On the shoulder content side, the league can really home in on behind-the-scenes content which fans cannot already access, such as dressing room team content from current and past seasons, and app exclusive interviews with current players, managers and legends. These would serve as an extra incentive for fans to sign up for the platform.

The league can also experiment with its creator content, through creator led-collaborations with players, and day-in-the-life footage, where fans can get an insight into creators being pitch-side and interacting with players. Partnerships such as YouTube’s recent deal with FIFA to provide creators pitch side access to games show that the creator led market carries growing value and interest, and is something the league can adopt in its own unique way.

‍Should the league introduce it to more markets and eventually the UK?

‍While launching Premier League Plus in Singapore is a bold step towards both controlling their content and reducing piracy, it comes with significant challenges and restrictions, both from a commercial and legal perspective.

The league going direct-to-consumer across multiple markets would mean it no longer has the stable and consistent broadcast revenue it receives from selling its broadcast rights, as it would solely rely on the number of subscribers who sign up for the platform.

So for the league to go direct-to-consumer via Premier League plus across multiple markets, they would essentially be gambling something that is tried and tested for something that carries greater risk.  

In markets such as America and the Nordics for example, where NBC and Viaplay respectively pay sizeable amounts to broadcast the Premier League, it wouldn’t make commercial sense for the league to launch the service in these areas, if it meant a reduction in return on their broadcast rights.

The league’s traditional broadcast deals are still succeeding as they are. Only last month, the league recorded a 25% increase in the value of their Broadcast Rights in South America, through a new deal with ESPN. For this reason, it may be best for the league to expand Premier League Plus in targeted markets, where they do not already have a sizeable broadcast presence.

There are also practical and legal challenges to the league introducing the service to more markets. In the UK, broadcasters Sky Sports and TNT Sports have exclusive territorial broadcasting deals, so Premier League Plus coming into the market could undermine their licensee rights and also breach their exclusivity.

This disruption in the market wouldn’t just affect the broadcasters themselves, but also clubs who rely on stable broadcast revenue to plan their spending around and to conduct transfer business. So in practice, this may not suit clubs in the league.

There is also a challenge when it comes to data protection when managing fan data on Premier League Plus across all jurisdictions it operates in. In the UK and according to the UK GDPR, this would relate to ensuring there is a lawful purpose of processing the data under Article 6, that data is processed lawfully, fairly and transparently under Article 5(1), and they also shouldn’t process it longer than necessary under Article 6.

There would also be issues around competition law if matches are all under one platform. Arguably, Sky Sports’ battle for broadcast rights with TNT Sports has allowed for healthy competition and ultimately an increases in value in broadcast rights. But the introduction of Premier League Plus as a sole broadcaster would reduce competition and eventually cause the death of the traditional broadcaster. So it’s a consequence that would need to be weighed up by competition authorities. 

Final Thoughts

‍While Premier League Plus would provide a centralised streaming platform for fans, there are significant challenges to it being rolled out on a broader scale. Nevertheless, Singapore marks the perfect opportunity for the league to get it started, adapt it and see how it can be scaled out in the future.