Netflix of football: Premier League could launch live football streaming service and treble earnings, says Simon Jordan

'Netflix for football': Jordan has a master plan to treble earnings
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Tom Dutton8 February 2019

The Premier League could more-than treble the value of its broadcasting rights by creating a 'Netflix of football' streaming service, according to Simon Jordan.

The former Crystal Palace chairman says the English top flight should copy the NFL's model and produce an in-house service which, he believes, would hugely increase revenue.

Sky Sports, BT Sport and Amazon Prime own the rights for Premier League football, with fans who want to watch every televised game spending up to £1,000 a season to subscribe to all three packages.

But Jordan says a more streamlined ‘Premier League TV’ service could send the value of broadcasting rights rocketing to around £10bn a season.

The Premier League have reopened the process of appointing a successor to executive chairman Richard Scudamore after Susanna Dinnage withdrew from the role in December before taking her post.

BBC executive Tim Davie has since turned down the job which Jordan describes as the most "exciting and exhilarating" in sport.

“Let me be clear – this job is the best job in football. Anyone who doesn’t have the gumption to do the job is a fool in my book," Jordan told Talksport.

“You’ve got a situation where the domestic rights are going backwards. I spoke at a BT and Sunday Telegraph conference about the business of football and it stunned me sat with the Liverpools and Tottenhams of the world and the question was, ‘What is the next frontier for football and its evolution financially?’.

"And the message back from the Tottenhams and Liverpools were ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’.

“The challenges in football are so engaging and so interesting. In my view, the Premier League has the opportunity to become a broadcaster in its own right and dwarf the revenues it currently gets.

“If you look at the NFL, which is perceived as a super sports league, an average NFL team gets $255million – around £200m.

“The average English Premier League club gets around £120m.

Jordan believes a streaming service could take the value of broadcasting rights beyond £10bn a season
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“The opportunity for the Premier League is exhilarating and exciting for whoever wants to come and do this job.

“But they’ve got people like Bruce Buck heading it up who are part of the so-called ‘Big Six’ who have got their own agenda and these people turning down the job will be lobbied by the ‘Big Six’.

“I’ve spoken about the Premier League becoming the ‘Netflix of football’, ie, the video on demand platform that controls its own product.

“If you had 100 million subscribers on ‘Premier League TV’ like with Netflix at £8 a month, you’d be bringing in £10bn a year, not £8.7bn every three years like the current deal does.

“This is the most exciting, exhilarating job you could have in sport so why no one wants it is beyond me.

“Football’s got to own its own outcome and build its own platform and by becoming the Netflix of football you control your own destiny.”