Bloomberg: Apple Considering Bid for English Premier League Streaming Rights in the UK

Apple is considering a bid for the rights to stream the English Premier League in the United Kingdom, among other lower league matches run by the English Football League, according to a Bloomberg report citing "people familiar with the situation."

Premier League Logo
From the report:

The rights under consideration would allow Apple to show Premier League games in the UK, as well as lower league matches run by the English Football League, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

If Apple went ahead with the plan, it would become the fourth major player in contention to purchase domestic broadcasting rights for top-flight soccer (or football, as it's called outside North America).

That would likely see a marked increase in the current £5.1 billion ($6.23 billion) valuation for domestic EPL rights, which operates on a three-year renewal cycle. Tender rights are currently being reviewed, with existing rights for the current three-year period set to expire in 2025.

Recent years have seen bidding wars play out between Sky Sports, BT Sport, and Amazon Prime Video, with Sky Sports often being the dominant player, although Amazon has been increasingly wielding its bidding power in recent years. Packaging terms ensure that no one broadcaster gains rights to all English Premier League matches, so any Apple deal for EPL broadcasting rights would necessarily fall short of the exclusivity deal the company successfully negotiated with MLS.

Apple has been pursuing sports content in an effort to attract new viewers to the Apple TV+ streaming service. The company has signed deals with Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer, which is currently available on ‌Apple TV‌+ via an MLS Season Pass priced at $14.99 per month or $99 per season. Apple has also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring an NBA streaming package.

‌Apple TV‌+ is also the home of hit sports comedy drama "Ted Lasso," in which an American college football coach is hired to coach an English soccer team.

Popular Stories

iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature

iPhone 16 Pro Max 80% Charge Limit: One Year Later, Was It Worth It?

Wednesday September 24, 2025 3:58 pm PDT by
With the iPhone 15 series, I did an experiment and kept my iPhone's Charge Limit set at 80 percent for an entire year. It provided an interesting look at the impact of charge limits on battery longevity, so I decided to repeat it for the iPhone 16 line. Since September 2024, my iPhone 16 Pro Max has been limited to an 80 percent charge, with no cheating. As of today, my battery's maximum...
Home Hub Command Center with Dome Base Feature

Apple Working on All-New Operating System

Thursday September 25, 2025 1:11 pm PDT by
Apple is developing an all-new operating system codenamed "Charismatic," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple smart home hub concept based on rumors This is likely Apple's long-rumored "homeOS" operating system. In a report last month, Gurman said both Apple's rumored smart home hub in 2026 and tabletop robot in 2027 will run the new operating system. He said the software platform ...
AirPods Pro 3 Newsroom

Apple's 'Back to School' Offer Ends Soon, Now Applies to AirPods Pro 3

Wednesday September 24, 2025 7:20 am PDT by
Apple's annual "Back to School" promotion for students ends soon, so act fast if you want to score free AirPods with the purchase of an eligible new Mac or iPad. Until Tuesday, September 30, college students and qualifying educational staff in the U.S. can receive free AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation when they purchase an eligible new Mac or iPad from Apple. This is a $179 value. ...
iOS 26

iOS 26.0.1 Update for iPhones Coming Soon — Here's What to Expect

Thursday September 25, 2025 12:40 pm PDT by
Apple is preparing to release iOS 26.0.1, according to a private account on X with a proven track record of sharing information about future iOS versions. MacRumors has also seen evidence of iOS 26.0.1 in its visitor logs in recent days. It is likely that iOS 26.0.1 will fix a camera-related bug on the new iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro models. In his iPhone Air review, CNN Underscored's...
iPhone 17 Pro Colors

Skipped the iPhone 17 Pro? Here's What is Rumored for iPhone 18 Pro

Tuesday September 23, 2025 8:55 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are still a year away, there are already a few rumors about the devices that offer an early look ahead. Below, we have recapped some of the early iPhone 18 Pro rumors so far. This story was published previously, and it has been updated to reflect the latest rumors. Many early rumors prove to be true, but nothing is confirmed yet, and Apple's...
iOS 26

Everything New in iOS 26.1 Beta 1

Monday September 22, 2025 12:44 pm PDT by
Apple released the first beta of iOS 26.1 today, just a week after launching iOS 26. iOS 26.1 mainly adds new languages to Apple Intelligence, but there are a few other features that are worth knowing about. New Apple Intelligence Languages Apple Intelligence is now available in Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese. AirPo...
apple tv 4k new orange

Next Apple TV Expected to Launch This Year With These New Features

Monday September 22, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
The next Apple TV is expected to be released later this year, and a handful of new features and changes have been rumored for the device. Below, we recap what to expect from the next Apple TV, according to rumors. Likely Features N1 Chip With Wi-Fi 7 Last year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the next Apple TV would be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, which is...
Apple More Personal Siri Ad

Apple Responds to U.S. Class Action Lawsuit Over Delayed Siri Features

Friday September 26, 2025 6:57 am PDT by
In March, Apple delayed the launch of its personalized Siri features, and soon after the company was hit with multiple class action lawsuits over the situation. The plaintiffs said they never would have purchased an iPhone 16, or would have paid less, had they known Apple's marketing about the Siri features was false. In the U.S., all of the complaints were consolidated into one class...

Top Rated Comments

BMox81 Avatar
33 months ago
This is great and all but what everyone really wants is the Premier League to provide one service that has all the games.

All this does is potentially add yet another subscription to proceedings which isn’t needed.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ForkHandles Avatar
33 months ago
"(or football, as it's called outside North America)."

We call it football as it's a game we play with a ball, that you kick with your foot.

I never got why Americans spent all that time correcting English words such as theatre, centre, colour to make them make more sense and then called their ball game, played with hands, football.

Should we start a common sense campaign to rename it to Handball?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chenks Avatar
33 months ago

one of the reasons people voted to leave was that they were annoyed with the interference from the EU
now that is very naïve!

"leavers" voted leave for a few reasons.
- racism/bigotry (a sizeable percent)
- they believed the lies being peddled to them (remember the £350 million a week bus?)
- they have the "little england" mentality

even the fisherman and farmers that though voting leaving was right are now realising it wasn't the right choice.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BMox81 Avatar
33 months ago

that's deemed "anti competitive" though, which is why the EPL aren't allowed to have just 1 provider holding all the rights.

of course, it's a flawed system though.
it works fine if someone is only interested in watching a couple of games, which means they can subscribe to 1 package showing the lowest games, however if someone wants to watch all the games they, at the moment, have to subscribe to 3 different providers (Sky, BT and Amazon).

i'm sure the EPL would love to be able to sell 100% of the rights to just 1 provider, it would drive the price up and make for a good auction, but they aren't allowed it.
There isn’t anything anti-competitive in the Premier League creating their own service. It’s their content after all.

The current format makes it so that no one service can have all the games and is why as you said, we have the three services showing the games. And of course the PL like this as it drives up the cost of the packages.

And is also why many people go down the IPTV route or stream the games illegally.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tomtad Avatar
33 months ago
Hopefully this opens up the possibility of all games to be streamed legally. The amount of games that you aren't able to watch live in the UK, mainly due to the archaic 3pm black out, is ridiculous.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Duncan-UK Avatar
33 months ago

Originally i wrote it cant be the case, but on checking it was. Why did the EU get involved in this, and not in any other European League's tv rights?

i cant think of any european country which has such a convoluted rights split.
the only reason Portuguese games are split are that Benfica choose to show their own games, everything else is SportTV. In i think 2027, it will go back to collective selling and it will almost certainly mean all games are on SportTV.


and when you think about it, its a very British way of dealing with it. take a situation which isnt broken, announce you are going to introduce competition which will make it better for the consumers, and make it much worse for them but companies make more money. What would promote competition would be to ban them from selling exclusive rights to anything, meaning two different companies could buy the rights for the same games or the whole package.
I think its a very EU way of thinking... That a company that loses exclusivity should then reduce its price to reflect this...

The sort of painful naivety that only exists in Brussels.

What is British is to take this instruction and gold plate it - one of the reasons people voted to leave was that they were annoyed with the interference from the EU - without possibly realising that it was the UK Civil Service that was the main villain over zealously applying the rules. Most other Member States merely pay lip service and ignore anything they dont want.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)