Football fans in Southeast Asia will be able to watch English Premier League games on Facebook in the future.
RTE reports that recently the US social media giant Facebook managed to strike a historic deal with the management of the football league to live-stream Premier League games on its platform starting in 2019.
The contract, worth GBP200 million (VND6.1 trillion), is Facebook’s largest foray into top-flight football streaming. According to The Times, the deal will last three years and allow Facebook users from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to watch all 380 Premier League games starting next year. It’s unclear at the moment if users must pay a fee to gain access to the matches.
The rights to broadcast Premier League games were previously held by BeIN, a spinoff of the Al Jazeera Media Network. To acquire the license to screen the matches, Facebook beat BeIN and Fox Sports Asia in an auction.
Earlier this year, the social media network hired Eurosport Chief Executive Officer Peter Hutton to help Facebook broker worldwide live-streaming deals, a move that “underline[s] its resolve to become a serious player in world sport,” according to Bloomberg.
[Photo via The Times]
