BT and Sky's multi-year deal to broadcast each other's matches should worry the Premier League

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There should be considerable concern within the Premier League over rights-holders BT and Sky agreeing to broadcast each other’s matches.

The surprise multi-year carriage deal to combine subscription forces against the growing threat of the streaming digital giants will see Sky and BT able to access and sell each other's football content.

The outcome is the culmination of talks that have taken place on and off for years. The expectation is that the new services will be available to customers from early 2019.

Rights-holders BT and Sky have agreed to broadcast each other's Premier League matches

This timescale will include the TV rights both networks might buy in the current Premier League tender for three years starting with the 2019-20 season.

The battle between Sky and BT Sport produced 70 per cent rises in rights prices over the last two PL auctions. So it will be a significant blow to the 20 clubs if the new TV union means there is no competitive need for them to keep paying ever more money to secure the packages.

The Premier League are understood to be not unduly concerned at present, in the desperate hope that other interested parties — one or more of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft — enter the bidding.

BT and Sky have partnered up against the growing threat of the streaming digital giants

But if it’s only down to BT and Sky again when the sealed bids are opened next February, the PL clubs are likely to be sharing less than the current £5.1billion, even with another 32 matches per season being sold.

Another long-term worry for the sports channel subscription model is that the Disney-owned ESPN are losing customers at an alarming rate in the US because viewers are no longer prepared to pay big monthly fees to watch sport.

Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore is negotiating the TV broadcast rights without the advice of David Kogan for the first time since 2000. Kogan is the genius strategist who has played such a major role in devising and securing the packages that have brought such riches to the PL this century. 

Scudamore wanted to keep his TV team more in-house, while Kogan preferred a big say or none at all — leading to an ‘amicable parting’.

Richard Scudamore is negotiating TV rights without the advice of David Kogan

BBC Sports Personality of the Year want to keep the wraps on the recipient of their lifetime achievement award on Sunday and this observer has no wish to spoil that. But the choice this year does smack of it being a consolation prize for never winning the trophy itself.

ITV executive David Brook, who helped Channel 4 win England Test cricket rights in 1999, has switched sides by joining the board of guerillacricket.com. Their unofficial, online, ball-by-ball cricket commentary is conducted off the television. They are piloting a Guerilla Grandstand today, keeping abreast of the sports action from a flat in south-east London.

ECB say sorry to Boycs

The ECB apologised to leading cricket pundit Geoff Boycott — via communications chief Chris Haynes — after their director of women’s cricket Clare Connor called his commentary on Test Match Special during the Adelaide Test ‘bordering on the unbearable’. 

Connor’s comment about the ‘arrogant all-knowing opinions of Boycott’ prompted him to reply: ‘Clare is not in a position to be unbiased or neutral in her opinions as she is paid by the ECB.’ And the unfailingly on-message Haynes went to see Boycott in Adelaide to explain where the ECB stood, having earlier ensured Connor deleted the tweet.

Ed Chamberlin, ITV racing presenter, had the honour of making the keynote address at York’s prestigious Gimcrack Dinner. Chamberlin, who doesn’t advertise his Old Etonian status, ended his speech with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s slogan, calling racing a wonderful sport ‘for the many, not the few’.

The ECB have recently apologised to leading cricket pundit Geoff Boycott