The English Football League (EFL) renewed its broadcast rights deal with Sky in the UK for the 2024-2029 period, covering the second, third and fourth tiers of English football as well as the EFL Cup. Amid serious interest from DAZN and Viaplay, pay TV operator Sky secured the rights for £187m per season - a 57% increase on its previous deal - but in turn will be able to broadcast more than six times the number of games. So, with multiple factors in play, how good a deal is this for both parties?

For Sky, the increase in games is certainly hugely appealing. The EFL Championship and the EFL Cup are respectively the 14th and 16th most popular sporting event in the UK according to Ampere’s Sports – Consumer data; and under the deal, Sky will be able to provide a far better offering to the fans of the competitions and takes the cost per game down from £700k to just £177k. However, not all games are equal; Sky already had many of the most valuable games (with some limitations) including the EFL Cup Final, all play-off matches and a selection of the top league games. So from a content perspective, this is much like adding a large volume of mid- or low-tier content to the deal as opposed to a small volume of highly valuable content.

While the EFL made far more games available for broadcast, it was far less drastic than the reported proposal to the EFL by streaming services such as DAZN and Viaplay, which would have seen the end of the 3pm blackout and all games available for broadcast: the number of games made available for broadcast by the EFL has historically been low due to concerns about the implications on match attendance when games are televised. Furthermore, even with high inflation rates, the 57% increase in rights value does fall against a trend of uncertainty in the trajectory of rights values: The Premier League, for example, agreed a rights renewal for 2022-2025 at the exact same rate as the previous agreement. And for the EFL this is a greater increase than the last deal, which generated a 35% upswing.

But there’s one additional revenue source that can no longer be utilised under the terms of the agreement: direct-to-consumer revenue from the EFL’s iFollow streaming service. While the service will still be available abroad, where a seasonal average of 29k unique customers purchased 82k match passes per season (according to the latest financial statements of EFL Media), the service will no longer be available in the UK to its average of 124k unique customers purchasing 706k match passes per season. 

While the revenue brought in by iFollow has been just a small piece of the overall pie, it was particularly impactful during the 2020-21 season, where attendances were drastically limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the EFL to recover £25m of the deficit left by the absence of matchday revenue for clubs. Supposing the 2022-24 seasons bring in the same iFollow revenue as the 2021-22 season, £47m would be generated over the course of the contract, adding an extra 8% to the 2019-2024 broadcast revenue (including direct-to-consumer). But of course, this revenue stream is not standardised in any way, and is skewed heavily to clubs with larger fanbases, while the split for broadcast revenues favour the teams that perform better and are in higher divisions.

Overall, the new deal represents a safe bet for both parties involved. Sky pays an affordable increase for a far greater number of content hours, and while matchday revenue may be impacted and the EFL can also no longer utilise iFollow domestically, the revenue from broadcasting alone is high enough to compensate this, and the 3pm blackout rule remains in place.