This is why the big clubs are investing so much in their academy systems.
They’ve become vital player factories for big clubs, to develop kids…. Then sell them to League 1 and Championship teams for £1-5m
It’s a 100% profit in the PSR.
Stockport city…… ooops, I mean Man City, arent interested in keeping their academy players. it’s purely a shop front to keep them under PSR (or to make it look like that).
Arsenal have agreed a fee of £10m plus add-ons to sign Brentford captain Christian Norgaard. Didn’t see that one on the radar, but with the loss of Jorginho he’s not a bad get at that price. As part of a squad you need depth.
Stan will stream the next season of the English Premier League in August under a complex agreement that would ultimately mean Optus subsidises a large proportion of the broadcast rights.
Nine Entertainment, which owns the streaming platform, is expected to pay about $60 million annually for the next three years to broadcast the league, two people briefed on the arrangement said. Optus will continue to pay $40 million every year over that time, despite giving up the rights.
The people briefed on the matter, who requested anonymity as they were not permitted to comment, said the plan was to transition customers in the first few months of the new season. The move, once complete, will mark the end of Optus Sport, a streaming service that quickly rose to prominence in 2016 when it beat rival Foxtel to the Premier League rights.
Nine and Optus declined to comment.
Optus approached prospective buyers last year following a decision to return its focus to core telecommunications assets. One of those parties was Stan, the broadcaster of major tennis tournaments including Roland Garros and Wimbledon, the UEFA Champions League, as well as Super Rugby.
$1.5900.00
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Under its new deal with Optus, Stan will expand its football offering to include the Premier League, the FA Cup, the K League, and J League.
The Women’s Super League, a tournament featuring Matildas players Caitlin Foord, Steph Catley, and Hayley Raso, was broadcast by Optus until the end of this season. That contract has expired and executives are in the market searching for a potential buyer. It is unclear whether Stan will broadcast the UEFA European Women’s Championship in early July.
Nine, the biggest media group in the country, is the publisher of The Australian Financial Review. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on live sport because it is one of the few ways to still reach many viewers.
The people briefed on the agreement said no staff were expected to transition from Optus to Nine. The deal is considered attractive to Nine because it already has staff and infrastructure ready to take over the rights.
Nine’s plans are for local programming are unclear, as is whether it will invest more in match data, such as team lineups and statistics, in the same way that Optus did. A deal is expected to be signed as early as this week.
The deal was first reported in the Financial Review in January*.*
With the minimum price to access Stan Sport at $27, it would take at least 185,000 new subscribers to cover the cost of the Premier League.
Even as it agrees to pay $60 million annually for those rights, Nine is cutting costs in other parts of the business amid a sluggish advertising market. It owns the Nine Network, and free-to-air television has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the past three years alone to YouTube, social media and ads on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Nine chief executive Matt Stanton announced more than $100 million in new cost cuts at the company’s half-year results in February. Revenue rose 2 per cent in the six months to $1.4 billion, but costs rose 3 per cent. It does not have unlimited funds to spend on sports rights – especially with bidding for a new NRL broadcast deal likely to kick off this year.
Optus Sport began in 2016 after the company, owned by Singapore’s Singtel, won the rights to broadcast the Premier League. It went on to acquire other international soccer competitions in Japan, Spain, and Korea, sublicenced the FIFA World Cup from SBS in 2018, and bought the rights to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023. It is also the broadcaster of the FA Cup.
These broadcast rights were once considered valuable to Optus. They improved the company’s average revenue per user, allowed it to chase new customers, and minimised churn of existing customers. At its peak, the company said Optus Sport had more than 1 million active subscribers.
Last April, it said it had 700,000 active subscribers.
However, the local market has changed rapidly since that time, and Optus Sport has found itself fighting for broadcast rights against deep-pocketed international rivals like Amazon and Paramount, as well as bigger local players like Stan and Foxtel’s sports streaming service Kayo.
The Premier League is considered the crown jewel of football rights, but Nine did not submit a bid in 2021 because of the premium it was required to pay to secure it. In the end, Optus signed a six-year deal with the Premier League, estimated to be worth about $100 million per year.
People familiar with Optus’ financial position said the streaming service was losing tens of millions of dollars under the current EPL deal.
The amount it pays is so substantial that in 2022, before the new deal started, Optus started charging phone and internet customers to watch its content. The subscription for Optus customers grew 40 per cent last year to $120 a year, while non-Optus customers pay $24.99 a month.
Accounts for the year to the end of March show a 14 per cent year-on-year decline to $65 million in revenue for subscription-based broadcasting services, which include Optus Sport and aggregation platform SubHub.
Thank fark for that. I remember when Optus Sport first launched and the connection was so bad I couldn’t make out the scores on the screen or see the ball. I had to just assume it was there based on pixelated player movement. Was it my connection? No, because as soon as the ads started at halftime it was all in HD! The service did improve, but by goodness I am glad to see the back of Optus.
I have just cancelled my subscription off the back of that article. I had a rolling 12 month subscription so I’m glad it hasn’t rolled.
Yeah well Optus Sport will be goneski, and I might even look at a new carrier for my mobile service. I think my contract ends in December this year…
Haha yes, adverts perfect HD. As for optus, that data breach was the tip of the iceberg for me.
Yep that was a nightmare. I had to get a completely new licence number, credit cards etc.
Will premier league be included in the base Stan subscription or will it be a cost add-on?
I don’t have Stan currently so not sure what they do with sports.
I think you have to have a Stan sub and then currently it’s $15 a month add on for Stan Sport. That will almost certainly go up now they have Premier League.
Of course
The one benefit is that we now only need one sub to have premier league and champions league. Paying $30 for Stan with sport and Optus at $25 was getting a bit much per month.
Well, time to drop Optus sports then. If I switch mobile providers can I keep my mobile number?
Sure can, you can just port your number over to the new provider. If you’re not fussed about having pre paid highly recommend Belong. Good choice of plans to choose from, on the Telstra network (think its actually owned by them) and whatever data you don’t use each month banks so you never lose the data you pay for.
Same. I’m done with them in October.
I used to get great reception on Optus sports. Then my son changed to Telstra with his business and Optus told me to pay up or fark off 
Sounds like will still be able to get EPL on Optus, at reduced cost?
Existing Optus Sport customers are set to receive discounted pricing to watch the English Premier League after the transfer of broadcast rights to Stan.
Oh, and of course Stan have increased their prices.
Nine Entertainment has quietly waved through a 19% price increase for subscriptions to Stan Sport, just one day after securing the coveted streaming rights to the English Premier League.
Rumours that Diogo Jota has passed in a car accident,hopefully not true
https://x.com/marca/status/1940682092356292849?s=46&t=5-DZbZKFPmEPZQaKvr9DcQ
