Sky Sports, BT Sport pay more than £5 billion for Premier League rights
The domestic broadcasting rights for the Premier League were awarded to Sky Sports and BT Sport on Tuesday for a whopping £5.136 billion.
The figure smashes all previous records paid for the rights to deliver the Premier League to the United Kingdom.
Sky Sports will air the majority of games after being awarded five of the seven packages, with 126 matches being shown live on the network per season.
In addition to the matches shown during traditional time slots, the station will also have the rights to air the league's first Friday evening matches.
Meanwhile, BT Sport have the rights to matches played on Saturday evenings and midweek games.
The cost for the rights is a 70% increase from the previous domestic television deal, meaning each match is roughly worth £10.2 million.
In 1992-93, broadcasters paid £663,000 per game. In 2001-4, that rose £3.6m. In 2013, it was £6.53m pg. Now - £10.19m pg.
— Ben Smith (@BenSmithBBC) February 10, 2015
The deal also puts a massive gap between the Premier League and Europe's top leagues.
With new TV deal, Premier League further solidifies itself as, by far, the richest domestic league in football pic.twitter.com/Ik4Yl985Cg
— Jake Cohen (@JakeFCohen) February 10, 2015
Great news for players, agents, estate agents, Ferrari salesmen...etc. @premierleague deal is a bumper £5.136 billion for 2016-19.
— Henry Winter (@henrywinter) February 10, 2015