EFL maintains Sky Sports as preferred choice to sideline DAZN options

Sky Sports is set to continue to show the EFL after being named the ‘preferred bidder for 2024 onwards.’

The British broadcaster has held the live rights to the league since 2002, but its partnership recently became uncertain with the EFL revealing that it was open to ‘new ideas and partners’.

Last week, it was reported that DAZN was looking to buy the rights to show every EFL match in a bid to remove the UK’s 3pm blackout, with all matches to be broadcast on the digital OTT platform. 

The league invited proposals last October telling potential bidders that it was willing to make its entire inventory of 1,891 games a season available.

With a large number of matches, the rights offering was split up into more than 20 packages including all three EFL divisions, the play-offs, the EFL Cup and the EFL Trophy.

However, on Monday, the EFL clarified that it has now completed a full and comprehensive review of the multiple submissions received as part of its broadcast rights sales process from 2024 onwards.

“The league will now enter into an exclusive month-long negotiating period with the preferred bidder, Sky Sports,” it said in a statement.

Signed back in 2018, the EFL’s previous five-year agreement is worth £595m, which allowed  Sky to show at least 138 league matches a season, including every play-off game and the Carabao Cup final.

In March, Premier League CEO Richard Masters stated that he is not planning to abolish the blackout, – adamant that it was needed to maintain live attendances at lower league grounds. 

“We’ve been proponents of Article 48 for the entire period of the Premier League and I don’t see that changing in the near term,” he said.

Yesterday’s Tweet from the EFL, which was followed with, ‘No further comment will be made on this matter at the current time’:

The EFL has now completed a full and comprehensive review of the multiple ITT submissions received as part of its broadcast rights sales process from 2024 onwards.

— EFL Communications (@EFL_Comms) April 3, 2023