Sky Sports weighs up opening instant Premier League highlights
UK media reports that Sky Sports is considering publishing instant Premier League match highlights on YouTube.
Sky Sports maintains the Premier League’s ‘clips package’ as part of its £3.6 billion 2018 broadcast rights renegotiation, bolstering audience engagement for its revamped ‘Sky Sports Football’ network.
The digital broadcaster is reported to be reviewing whether to open its arrangement with the Premier League, publishing instant ‘three-minute highlight videos’ across social media platforms shortly after a match finishes.
At present, Premier League highlight clips are available to Sky Sports subscribers, and further published across partner Sky UK platforms and News UK publications.
UK media will be monitoring Sky Sports movements closely, as the open publishing of Premier League instant highlights could significantly impact the viewing figures of BBC Sports flagship ‘Match of the Day’ programmes.
In 2018, the BBC extended its broadcast arrangement with the Premier League paying a reported £211 million for Match of the Day to continue to televise ‘long-format highlights’ until at least 2022.
Countering changing sports viewership dynamics and further developing ‘on-demand content’, during the past two years Sky Sports has moved to revamp its programming formats launching its range of dedicated sports channels.
The Premier League season gets underway on Friday 9 August, with Sky Sports broadcasting newly promoted Norwich City’s trip to the European champions, Liverpool.
Source: SBC News
