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ESPN Loses Premier League UK TV Rights Battle

by Christopher Harris

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Breaking news: The Premier League has announced that out of the six TV packages available for bidding in the UK for the 2010-2013 seasons, Sky Sports won five of those packages with Setanta getting the sixth and final one. That means that ESPN’s attempt to bid on the rights ended in failure — in the UK, at least.

This is a huge win for Sky Sports who have increased their number of packages from four (for the 2007-2010 seasons) to five. Setanta Sports will be showing less games because they’ll be moving from two packages (2007-2010 seasons) to one. But the biggest loser is ESPN who despite a lot of the chatter about the Disney-owned company making an aggressive raid on rights to the UK EPL TV market ended up empty handed.

Now that we know who will own the UK TV rights for the Premier League for 2010-2013, the next step for the Premier League is to allow broadcasters to begin bidding on the US TV rights to the Premiership. We should expect to hear who wins that battle in 1-2 months from now. Stay tuned to EPL Talk for all of the latest developments.

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