Premier League Agrees Deal With The NBA’s Broadcast Partner In China

The Premier League has secured a broadcast deal in China for the 2020/21 season. The deal, with Tencent Holdings Limited, partially replaces a three-season deal between the Premier League and PPTV, a company owned by conglomerate, Suning Holdings Group.

PPTV had withheld a payment due in March 2019 hoping to renegotiate the remaining two seasons of a contract worth $750million. However, the move backfired with the Premier League terminating the deal, even though PPTV had made a substantial up-front payment of $350 million upon signing.  

The value of the new deal has not been announced but the Financial Times has reported that the value is lower than PPTV would have paid for the rights to the new season. However, there is the partial carrot of revenue-sharing between Tencent and the Premier League based on subscriptions.

In announcing the contract with Tencent, the Premier League stated that more than half the games would be broadcast free to air with the others through a subscription model. Tencent’s current subscriber base is an estimated 114 million.

With the 2020/21 season now tied down, the Premier League will surely now look to cut a longer-term deal with Tencent.  

The overseas market has become increasingly important to the Premier League. Back in 1992 when the Premier League was formed, the value of overseas rights was essentially zero. For the current three-year cycle, overseas rights had hit a record high of $5.6 million with PPTV in China and NBC in the United States, the two largest.

Tencent Holdings Fact File

The company has a range of holdings including major interests in entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other technology and is the world’s largest video game vendor.

Forbes ranks Tencent Holdings at #50 in its Global 2000 of 2020, with a market cap of $509.7 billion. The nearly 63,000 employees helped generate sales of over $54 billion and a profit of $13.5 billion.

The company holds minority interests in such well-known names as Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Spotify, and Tesla Inc. and other stakes in 600 companies around the world.

Tencent became the NBA’s exclusive digital partner in China in 2009 and have streamed live NBA games or many seasons.

A five-year deal worth $1.5 billion was announced in 2019. Since then, NBA coverage has included video on-demand, additional NBA programming, and fan-based experiences as well as live games. The current deal runs through to the end of 2024-25 season.

In 2019, the NBA and Tencent estimated that 490 million fans in China watched NBA programming including 21 million viewers for Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Over the previous four seasons the viewership increased by a factor of three.

However, the NBA’s partnership with Tencent has not all been smooth sailing. Last October, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and it led to China’s broadcasters, including Tencent, placing a temporary hold on the broadcast of NBA games in China.

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