British blogger The Swiss Rambler said that Telekom Serbia will pay 900 percent more for the TV rights to the Premier League matches than what Sport Klub is paying now.
Telekom Serbia signed a contract to pay the Premier League a total of 600 million British pounds (or 705 million euros) for the TV rights from 2022 to 2028, the blogger said basing the calculation on data published by The Times and The Athletic.
Swiss Rambler has more than 193,000 followers on Twitter. His analysis was retweeted by Serbian lawyer Milan Antonijevic who said that Telekom Serbia is using public funds to pay double what, for instance, a Chinese broadcaster paid for the same TV rights.
Swiss Rambler posted his findings on Twitter, commenting on a six-year contract to TV rights for the Premier League matches which the US NBC network paid 2.7 billion dollars for. The Twitter posts said that this was more than double the previous contract and compared his findings with contracts signed for other countries including Serbia. The Telekom Serbia contract is worth 10 times the previous contract.
Antonijevic’s attention also mentions that China is paying half the amount that Serbia is. “If I see this right, the state company Telekom paid double what the Chinese TV company paid for the broadcasting rights to the Premier League matches with taxpayers’ money. That is 600 million while the same rights cost China 300 million? It would have been better to build a Telekom highway or a subway in Novi Sad for that kind of money,” Antonijevic tweeted.
According to the posts, the rights for China cost 300 million pounds but for two years less which means that Serbia is set to pay 100 million pounds (117 million euro) per season while the Chinese company will pay 75 million pounds (88 million euros). The Telekom contract includes the rights for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Slovenia.
CEO of Telekom Serbia, Vladimir Lucic, refused to disclose the value of the contract, citing trade secrets. N1 reported earlier that Lucic claimed that the decision to buy the rights to broadcast Premier League matches was purely a business decision that will bring profits and dividends to shareholders. He rejected claims that Telekom Serbia’s strategy is part of the wider strategy of the Serbian authorities of soft power in the Balkans.
(N1, 30.11.2021)
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