The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ion Akimuelere.

The Premier League is launching its own direct-to-consumer streaming channel in Singapore for next season.

So what will it look like?

And could it be a sign of things to come in the UK?

All right, in with me in the studio, we've got Adam Leventhal. We've also got Matt Slater as well.

Gents, let's get into this because look, Matt, the English top flight is going direct to consumers for the first time with their service Premier League Plus.

Now, we'll get into what that could mean for

broadcasting later on. But firstly, can you just take us into the deal that's been struck

with Singapore? Well, we don't know all the details. We don't know the numbers, for example.

But what we do know is what Richard Masters told us last week, the Premier League CEO. He kind of dropped it in.

He was speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Conference, which is one of the best

football business conferences going. And he's being asked all sorts of questions about the future

of the league, Man City, you name it. And he kind of just sort of almost casually announced this. And I was sitting in the audience and I was thinking, well, I've been away at the Winter Olympics. Have I missed this announcement? Just because the way he delivered it, it was very sort of kind of, oh, by the way, we're doing this thing in Singapore. And I was like, have I missed this story? And I couldn't see anything about it. In fact, the only thing I could see was the stories that me and loads of other journalists wrote that it might happen about six years ago, which is when the idea was first floated. And then he finally finished talking. And there were some questions from the floor. And the very first question from the floor was from uh martin zegra at the time to say um that thing you just said in singapore

is it is it you and he basically said it again so that it was the only piece of news of the day

and and here's what we know so starting from next season, the Premier League in conjunction,

so it's a joint venture

with his existing broadcast partner in Singapore

called Star Hub,

six-year deal.

It's going to go direct to consumer.

So this is the thing that people have been talking about.

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