Sky Again Wins Premier League Rights for Football First Highlights

• Yeah, It’s a lot of money again for the Premier League

Having reported last week that Yahoo won the exclusive UK online highlights rights, it’s also been confirmed that the only other outstanding contract for the 2010 to 2013 round, the “long form” highlights package, has again been won by Sky. Sky will utilize these rights again for their highly popular review show Football First.

After the Premier League tied up loose ends on home soil and wrapped up deals with Russia and Albania, the Premier League will have banked, even with expenses added in, some £3.3bn from it’s combined media contracts. It’s a pretty impressive number for the world’s most popular sporting league considering it’s up from £2.7bn last time around. Again, overseas rights are cited as the main reason for the increased revenue.

So what does this mean for the 20 Premier League clubs?

In short, not much but the same, at least not yet. Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is reportedly already under pressure from clubs to not splash blankets of cash upon Premier League participants as to hopefully avoid another round of damaging wage inflating scenarios that threatened to destroy all in it’s path this season. See under Portsmouth, Hull City, West Ham and others.

In addition to the continued developments with Sky, ESPN has secured a deal allowing them to show Premier League highlights via mobile phones from Sky. Sky originally picked up the mobile rights from Vodafone and 3. ESPN hasn’t settled on a model for the service just yet, but look set to release details, which are sure to include rates, fees and subscription information in the coming weeks. The service itself will be available from next season through 2013.

Feel free to share any thoughts on the continuing developments from the cash-soaked Premier League, Sky and ESPN in the comments section below.