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Premier League CANCELS its biggest foreign TV deal after Chinese streaming giant PPTV withheld a £160m payment due to coronavirus… leaving ANOTHER financial headache for clubs with contract worth over £564m over three seasons
- The Premier League has made the huge call to end a lucrative Chinese TV deal
- The £564million agreement has now been chopped after just one season
- Financial impacts are likely to have long-standing permutations as a result
The Premier League has pulled the plug on its huge £564m deal with Chinese broadcasters.
The move has ended the right to show top flight English football in the country with immediate effect, and looks set to have huge lasting financial repercussions on the football landscape of the UK.
Disagreements arose after a £160m payment was withheld due to complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic, as reportedly exclusively here by Sportsmail, and now the Premier League has moved swiftly to take decisive action.
The Premier League has pulled its hugely lucrative TV deal with Chinese broadcasters
Rights holders Suning Holdings – the Chinese conglomerate that also has control of Italian club Inter Milan – withheld the payment of £160m that was due in March.
In initial retaliation the Premier League then rejected their offer for a three-year extension to the contract to cover the 2022-25 seasons.
This saga now has potentially seismic ramifications for club finances as the Chinese TV deal is the most lucrative in the world outside the UK, with Suning agreeing to pay £564m for the current 2019-22 cycle for the right to broadcast Premier League games on their digital channel, PPTV.
The Premier League had been locked in a £160m standoff with the Chinese broadcast partners
A Premier League statement on Thursday read: ‘The Premier League confirms that it has today terminated its agreements for Premier League coverage in China with its licensee in that territory.
‘The Premier League will not be commenting further on the matter at this stage.’
These latest developments follow on from a string of political controversies, during which the relationship between England and China has become soured.
In July Chinese state broadcasters CCTV chose not to air coverage of Premier League games following growing tensions between China and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s UK government, which came as a result of the ban on telecom company Huawei from the new development of 5G in Britain.
This followed on from the prime minister’s opposition to the new security laws imposed in Hong Kong, causing further tension.
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