Liverpool believe there’s ‘big potential’ as records tumble after £2bn deal

The US has been a key market in driving the value of Premier League TV rights upward

The growth of the Premier League has long been fuelled by its ability to generate huge sums of money for the sale of live matches to broadcasters.

For the current cycle, the deal that English football’s top tier has broken through the £10bn mark. While that is still some way off the 10-year, $100bn deal that the NFL struck for their recent media rights offering, it is a sign of the strength of the Premier League and its increasing global appeal that such figures can now be achieved.

The most recent deal that the Premier League inked both domestically and internationally dwarfed many of its European rivals, with disparities of two and three times between some of the comparative deals. For example, the average team in the Premier League makes more than twice as much broadcasting revenue as those in Spain’s La Liga, European football’s second most watched and most lucrative league.

One of the most interesting aspects of the most recent Premier League TV deal was that, for the first time, the value of the rights sold internationally outstripped those sold domestically to broadcasters such as Sky, BT Sports (soon to be TNT) and Amazon Prime Video. Of that international market the USA accounted for £2bn of it, with broadcasters such as NBC bringing the Premier League to an audience that has now taken an interest in English football and that represents an extraordinary opportunity for clubs.

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For the most recently published list of Premier League central payments for the 2021/22 season, Liverpool pulled in around £145m from equal share payments, facilities fees (related to number of times featured in a live broadcast) and merit payments for both domestic and international markets. International rights for the season, for Liverpool, were worth £55.9m.

Maintaining the strength of the product is core to the success of the Premier League and the ability of its clubs to keep growing off the field and investing in what happens on it. In the US, a key market for the Premier League and its biggest member clubs such as the Reds, latest figures have shown that there is growing interest that bodes well for further hikes in the value of the deal when the next cycle comes up for grabs, especially with a World Cup in America to get underway in 2026.

The 2022/23 season was the second most watched in Premier League history in the US, with broadcasters NBC seeing a three per cent increase year on year. Total audience delivery reached an average of 527,000 per game while nine matches averaged more than one million viewers.

Arsenal’s 3-2 win over Manchester United in January became the most watched Premier League game in US history with an audience of 1.9m across NBC, Peacock and NBC Sports Digital. Peacock’s coverage of Liverpool’s draw with Arsenal on April 9 drew the league’s largest US streaming audience, averaging 833,000 viewers, while viewers watched a record 17.7 billion live match minutes across all NBC platforms, up nine per cent on the prior record set last season.

On social media, NBC Sports Soccer accounts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram finished 2022/23 with record consumption while video views on the accounts jumped 172 per cent from last year, with social media engagement increasing by 89 per cent and impressions rising 35 per cent.

The NBC Sports YouTube channel ended the season with a record of more than 230 million views (up 20 per cent) and 1.7 billion minutes watched (up 30 per cent).

These figures back up why there has been so much investment made by broadcasters into acquiring Premier League rights. For the broadcasters, there are few things like live sport that help drive subscriptions which is, ultimately, what the companies rely on.

The success that is currently being seen in the US bodes well for Liverpool’s own efforts to continue to grow its brand and appeal in the country. Partnerships with the likes of Nike, Converse and LeBron James have all leaned into making sure there is appeal to fervent football fans, passive fans and even those with no real affinity for the game but interest in the brand collaborations it engages with.