Open Access

Jonah Pross

• Since its foundation in 1992, the English Premier League has been characterized by huge inflationary leaps in broadcasting rights fees and a steady increase in transfer expenditures of the twenty member clubs of the league. By becoming a global brand with billions of people watching the live matches on TV, the Premier League has proven its status as the most successful sports league worldwide. However, after analyzing the new broadcasting deal which will last until the year 2022 and the transfer fees spent during the last three seasons, the domestic TV market growth, as well as the increase in the average transfer fee spent by the Premier League clubs are very likely to reach their saturation level fairly soon. While the new domestic TV deal results in less revenue for the clubs compared to the previous deal from 2016-2019, the value for the Premier League´s overseas broadcasting rights for 2019-2022 has risen by 35% given an increase in the number of games being sold for broadcast (Wigmore 2019). In order words, the overseas broadcasting rights revenues will be the driving force in the future of the Premier League, as there is still a huge potential for the league to gain more money and therefore balance the loss from its saturated domestic TV market (Robinson und Clegg 2019). Despite the good prospects of increasing international revenues, there is some criticism regarding the new business model. The new overseas-rights formula includes higher revenues for the Big Six of the Premier League, leading to an even greater injustice among the twenty member clubs. It remains interesting to follow, if the Premier League will become an even stronger and more successful entity by the increase in international rights fees or if the increasing injustice will lead to a breakaway of the Big Six clubs from the poorer, smaller and less popular teams comparable to the situation in 1992, before the foundation of the Premier League.