Although Sky’s bids might be seen as putting its majority ownership of PL rights beyond reach at the next auction in 2018, the contest between Sky and BT is by no means over, raising the question of further inflation of premium sports content as other rights come up for renewal

Sport may have lost much of the importance it once had in generating profits from pay-TV platforms; however, the record bids by Sky leave no doubt as to the continuing importance of premium sports, and especially PL football, in terms of building and retaining overall scale

Through placing less inflated bids than Sky and not winning any extra packages, BT has put itself in a more flexible position with regard to future strategic options, which includes (VULA permitting) competing for televised rights to other premium sports besides football

The record £1,712 million to be spent yearly on live TV rights to the PL from 2016/17, about equal to the entire BBC TV programming budget, has hammered home the continuing importance of premium sports, especially PL football, in cementing scale in pay-TV

Several regulatory processes are still in play that could influence market developments over the next few years. We expect Ofcom’s WMO remedy to continue in close to its present form, while the VULA margin squeeze sets significant restraints on BT Sport over rights payments

Although the Virgin Media complaint to Ofcom has raised genuine competition concerns over the design of the PL auction, which the regulator is investigating, we see little opportunity for significant intervention