The rest of the world and more so Africa
would have to wait until the late 1960s
and 70s for their first live sports action on
TV. This was in the Olympics in 1964 at
Tokyo as well as World Cup in England
in 1966. Back then, much of TV viewing
was handed to the national broadcasters
as they would be the only ones with such
infrastructure. This would continue up
until the 1990s when TV rights would
become fully commercialized.
Origins of TV Screening and
Commercialization into TV
rights
Commercialization of TV rights started in
England’s football league when the then
Football Association (FA) management
unveiled a blueprint for the Future of
Football. The document detailed among
others to professionalize the soon-to-be
Premier League. Broadcasts on satellite
and cable TV would be what prompted
fast-tracking of the formation of the
League with the promise of a bounty of
revenue for participating teams. Though
initially targeting football, sale of rights in
England would then include cricket and
rugby.
In US, the sale of TV rights had been
pursued in the 1980s and 90s with major
sports bodies in basketball, football and
hockey looking to fully commercialize
screening. This included major events such
as NBA’s All Star Weekend and football’s
Super Bowl – one of sports’ biggest event
viewed at a single sitting.
Back to England, the best model of TV
rights was introduced during the launch
of Sky TV which happened in 1991 but
had to wait until a year later. In 1992, Sky
won a five-year deal to screen live Premier
League games at $409.5 million beating
BBC (which got the rights to screen
highlights, packaged in the Match of the
Day format). The third competitor for
the TV rights bid, ITV lost out entirely.
While ITV may have seemingly looked to
have lost out on the local English scene, it
did win the rights to UEFA Champions
League in 1999.
The developments in England formed a
92 MAL24/18 ISSUE
In our parts of the
world, the realiza-
tion of sports broad-
cast and the impact
of TV rights is finally
dawning on us. From
the sports federa-
tions owning different
properties and prop-
ping them for the var-
ious media partners to
fans who love their ac-
tion as and where they
need it. With the in-
creasingly affordable
mobile devices and
connectivity, the pow-
er of more than one
screen has become a
reality sooner rather
than later in develop-
ing economies such as
Africa’s.
basis for many other sports developments
across the continent. It did help both
participating clubs and associations to
mine major revenues on the TV rights
alone. From a fair amount of 10-15%,
current estimates put the revenue from
TV rights at between 30-40% for clubs
across Europe and Americas.
It has been a bone of contention in
more advanced sports properties such as
US basketball scene where players have
engaged in wages and salaries sit-outs due
to their perceived exploitation by team
owners.
The latter have had to work out tough
measures to ensure worthy TV earnings,
which the former feel entitled to being the
main actors on the court.
Major TV Rights Deals
What are some of the major sports TV
rights deals of our day? We’ll review 3
of the biggest sports deals in the world
including;
National Football League (NFL) from
the US – this deal is worth $39.6 billion
having been signed for a 9-year period.
Each year’s worth is $4.5 billion of
payments for the four US networks who
signed including CBS, Fox, NBC and
ESPN. Does this give credence to why
Super Bowl is what it is?
National Basketball Association (NBA) –
US - $24 billion deal signed by ESPN and
TNT from 2016 – 2025. This is split at
$2.6 billion from the two major US sports
networks.
Premier League – UK – this is worth
approx. $ 7 billion where two TV networks
Sky and BT signed a 3-year deal from
2016–2019. This is at a $2.3 billion per
years’ worth of monies. Perhaps this is the
one that most sports fans from this part of
the world can identify with.
Other major deals include Baseball’s
$12.2 billion 9-year deal; Football’s Italian
league’s Serie A $ 3.4 billion 3-year deal;
and German’s league (Bundesliga) $ 5.5
billion 4-year deal.
World Cup TV Rights
Joining the bandwagon of the TV rights,
the world’s biggest game started off by
screening the games in 1954. In 1966 the
World Cup games were broadcast for the
first time to a world audience across all
continents. This would continue until the
late 1990s and early 2000s when media
companies sought to compete for the
rights to the 1-month extravaganza.
With the transition of broadcasting from
terrestrial and satellite to digital signals,
there was a change in consumption of
media content even for live sports actions.
The World Cup was no exception and the
effect has been gradual.