Murdoch or Branson - who will grab the rights for the PL?

Billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Sir Richard Branson will face off in potentially a GBP 2 billion struggle to see which one will grab the rights for live Premier League matches.

BSkyB, owned by Murdoch, and NTL, the cable group in which Sir Richard Branson is now the largest single shareholder following its purchase of Virgin Mobile, will submit sealed bids at the Premier League’s London headquarters.

The bidding war likely will mean an increase in payment for viewers who wish to follow their teams on TV during the 2007-08 season.

The package has attracted more interest than before with a wide range of potential bidders, including new entrants such as Irish broadcaster Setanta, and terrestrial services such as Channel 4 and Five hoping to return live top-flight action to free-to-air television for the first time in 15 years.

Overseas entities such as Disney-owned ESPN and broadband companies BT and France Telecom, have also shown interest. All the potential bidders could drive the price to more than GBP 2 billion, factoring in overseas rights, highlights and mobile contracts. The 2003 auction raised GBP 1.6 billion.

As Sky’s exclusivity led to disputes, the Premier League agreed with European competition regulators that one broadcaster would not win all of the matches. So, the league has split the 138 contests into six “balanced” packages, each with 23 matches, with no broadcaster able to take more than five.

Murdoch's Sky won the rights to air top-flight games in 1992, and has invested billions into football, changing the sport’s image and padding the bank accounts of players and their agents to once unthinkable levels.

But NTL wants to wrest the package from Murdoch, and sources confirmed yesterday it would bid for at least half the 138 live games. If it wins, one possible option is to withhold them from Sky's satellite service and market its cable offering as the only place to see all of the games.

Sky will bid for all six balanced packages, hoping to win five, while Setanta hopes to win two packages. Channel 4 and Five will lodge speculative bids banking that no other pay broadcaster will be interested in a lone package, and they can pick up 23 inexpensive matches.

City analysts predict that Sky will pay whatever it takes to win five packages, topping the GBP 2.5 million a game it doled out in 2003. But the intervention of the EC, designed to open up the market and increase choices, actually could make matches more expensive to watch in the long run.