Apple unlikely to bid for English Premier League broadcasting rights

Apple is unlikely to bid to acquire the domestic broadcasting rights for the English Premier League, with Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, dismissing previous rumors, saying the term of the deal are “not exciting.”

Earlier this year, it was widely reported that Apple was in discussions to submit a bid later this year when the tender process for the next set of rights begin ahead of the Premier League’s current three-year deal with Sky Sports and BT Sport ending in 2025.

The deal would see the iPhone maker how Premier League games in the UK through Apple TV+, potentially replacing Sky Sports who hold the exclusive rights to broadcast the English Premier League that it has had since 1992.

However, in a new interview with The Daily Mail, Cue says the terms of the deal do not meet Apple’s needs.

“I don’t like the word exclusivity because that’s important but not as important.” “The global rights are important to us. We’re a global company, we have customers in every country in the world, a large number of customers, and it’s not exciting for me to have something that you can have but you can’t have.”

“I can’t justify throwing what I think are the best engineers in the world on a small subset product. It has to be this kind of a partnership because our level of investment is significant. This isn’t “hey, I’ve got an opening from 8pm to 10pm tonight and I’m going to put this game on.” That’s not the way we’re doing it. We’re all in on this as an investment point of view, so it doesn’t work unless it’s something significant.”