The 2021-22 Premier League season will officially kick off on August 14. As Chinese fans, the first question we are concerned about is on which platforms we can see live Premier League matches in the new season. Now, that’s the answer.
The official announcement of the official league between Iqiyi and Beijing announced that the Iqiyi sports will become the exclusive new media broadcasting platform for mainland China and Macao in the early morning of the Chinese mainland and Macao. It will broadcast the 2021-22 to 2024-25 four seasons of the premier league matches.
As everyone knows, the exclusive media copyright in the Chinese mainland and Macao has changed hands for various reasons in the past few years.
Originally, PP sports under Suning banner won the exclusive media copyright of the 2019-2022 season in Chinese mainland and Macao with 523 million pounds.
However, due to the impact of the epidemic situation, PP sports and the Premier League have only cooperated for one season, and there are differences on the value copyright. On September 3, 2020, before the 2020-21 season of the Premier League, PP sports and the Premier League will terminate their contract. After half a month, the Premier League had to look for a replacement.
In the first round of the 2020-21 Premier League season, no domestic platform organization can live the Premier League games. After the first round, Tencent sports officials announced that they had successfully obtained the copyright of “bottom hunting” to broadcast all the remaining matches (372 matches) of the Premier League 2020-21 season. It was reported that Tencent sports only paid $10 million in copyright fees, far lower than the high expenses of PP sports.
However, the cooperation between premier league officials and Tencent will last only one season. Before the 2021-22 new season, Iqiyi sports and the Premier League reached a new exclusive media copyright in the next 4 seasons in China’s mainland and Macao. The England Football Super League is the sole source of new media rights.
As for the copyright fee reached between iqiyi sports and Premier League, relevant information has not been found yet, but it can be predicted that the fee this time will not be as high as the sky high price in PP sports period, but it will not be as low as the super low price when Tencent “took over” last year. Only by making the event copyright fees return to reality and rationality can all parties win.