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Premier League sets up first direct streaming platform

Perhaps the newsiest moment of this week’s Financial Times Football Business summit came when Richard Masters, Premier League chief executive revealed that the league is finally building a direct-to-consumer streaming platform, which will debut next season in Singapore.

The idea has been floating around since before the pandemic, with most people referring to it by the rather tongue-in-cheek moniker “Premflix”. Its real name, we now know, will be Premier League+. Masters called it “an important step” and a “big change” for the world’s most popular football league.

So, what does this all mean? Firstly, the Singapore move should be viewed as an experiment. The Premier League is doing this in a small but mature market and in partnership with a willing broadcaster, StarHub. The stakes, therefore, are relatively low. It gives the league the chance to test its capabilities in all sorts of things it hasn’t had to do before — such as taking subscription payments and pricing its own products — in a small, manageable way.

Once any kinks are ironed out, Masters said the service could potentially be rolled out elsewhere. Clearly the league would not go to all the trouble of building the tech just to sell it to one small market.

But what else might be going on? Some attendees suggested that south-east Asia was such a hotbed of piracy that it made sense for the Premier League to make its move into streaming there. If the price and the product are right, perhaps the league can bring some of that illicit viewing back onside.

Another theory is that the Premier League is simply building a stick to wave at broadcasters during future rights negotiations. By giving itself the option of going direct to consumer, media companies will have to keep paying up.

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