The English Football League (EFL) has chosen Sky Sports as its preferred bidder for the rights to broadcast its games.
Sky Sports and the EFL will now enter an exclusive month-long negotiating period, the football body said in a statement on Twitter.
The League will now enter into an exclusive month-long negotiating period with the preferred bidder, Sky Sports.
No further comment will be made on this matter at the current time.#EFL
— EFL Communications (@EFL_Comms) April 3, 2023
When the EFL reported last month that it was welcoming bids, it was expected that Sky, which has held the rights since 2002, would have to almost double the value of its current £119mln-a-year package which expires at the end of the 2023-24 season.
Alongside Sky, rival broadcasters Dazn and Viaplay also threw their names in the hat for the rights to show the games.
Dazn’s bid was reportedly for all 1,625 games across the Championship, League 1 and League 2 which if successful, would have ended the Saturday 3pm blackout currently in place on all football games in the UK.
When bids were made, the EFL believed there was a demand for more of its games, with Sky only broadcasting 138 games per year, less than 10%.
Although details of Dazn’s bid have not been made public yet, the decision to continue with Sky casts some doubt on the hopes of streaming services which are looking to broadcast all football games in England.
Apple and Amazon are said to be looking into streaming England's top-flight league, the Premier League.
Amazon already has a deal to show 20 league games a season, while Apple, which recently signed a contract to broadcast all Major League Soccer games in the US, is looking to grab some top-flight fixtures when the current deal expires in 2025.
For EFL clubs, the main income source is matchday revenue, and a service that streams all games is likely to have an adverse impact on attendance.
In the Premier League, the limited number of games is what drives value in the brand, according to Conrad Wiacek, a sports analyst at GlobalData.
“Showing every game ultimately de-values the product,” Wiacek said.