Despite Sky Sports signing a deal with the SPFL to broadcast Scottish Premiership games until 2029, the TV landscape could soon change for Celtic and Scottish football.
The new terms of Sky’s agreement with the SPFL kick in this summer with the broadcaster able to show up to 60 live Premiership matches every season from 2024/25 onwards, increased from 48.
However, new channels are set to come into the mix after the league body put another package of matches out to tender, as is their right per the new deal with Sky.
SPFL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster has shared that multiple bids have been received over the last few weeks for the 20-league-game bundle.
It means that there’ll be more income for Celtic and the Premiership, with Bhoys matches set to be included.
Neil Doncaster on new SPFL broadcast agreement
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland over the weekend, Doncaster said: “We have the ability to take a further 20 games to market. We’re currently in that process at the moment. We issued an invitation to tender, that’s gone out to various broadcasters and we’re working through the responses.
“It went out two weeks ago. We’ve had a couple of rounds of bidding and we had a closing date yesterday. We’ll be working through that over the next couple of weeks.
“They’ll be decent games. There are various Celtic and Rangers games and the Edinburgh derby. There are games that in an ideal world Sky would take but they’ve got a limit. Sky will have the first picks. Sky, who currently have 48 games, from the summer will have up to 60 games. They’ll have the first pick in each fixture round.
“The market has changed – they’ve now bought over a thousand English Football League games, they’ve increased hugely the amount of English Premier League games they take. Sky are awash with football content in the UK so I would expect that if the packages are brought then they’ll be bought by another broadcaster.”
The potential bidders for Celtic matches
Asked who is in the mix to make a new deal, Doncaster continued: “We’d love for Apple and Google to be bidding aggressively for our rights but we’re not quite in that space.
“Amazon are going to be out of the English Premier League market, they didn’t succeed in the recent Premier League auction. Other potential bidders – you’ve got DAZN who by volume are one of the biggest sports broadcasters in Europe. You’ve got Premier Sports who currently have the cup rights. You’ve got the likes of TNT/Discovery. There are certainly people out there who may be short of football content who may have an interest.
“These will be attractive games. There will be a number of Celtic and Rangers games, potentially an Edinburgh Derby, potentially a Dundee derby – so I would hope that we are in position to have more games on television next season.”
For Celtic fans cost of support continues to increase
With another rise in season ticket prices for the coming campaign and now potentially another subscription service hoovering up game rights, following Celtic just continues to get more and more expensive.
It would be handy for fans if TNT or Premier Sports took these new rights because several Celtic matches are already on there each season in Europe and the cups.
However, with Doncaster suggesting Amazon and DAZN are in the hunt, it may not be that convenient. An interesting couple of months are ahead.