The newly appointed Foxtel chief executive Peter Tonagh, has wasted no time in bringing his influence to the organisation by striking a new deal that delivers delayed coverage of the EPL back to the pay-tv provider.
The loss of the EPL had been a PR disaster for Foxtel ever since the deal with Optus was announced last year. So Tonagh is understandably keen to spread a positive message.
Full details of the Foxtel EPL deal is available here and an open letter from the CEO is published below.
At Foxtel we are very passionate about our sport – as passionate as anyone – and we are deeply committed to bringing the best possible experience to all of our fellow sports fans.
So you can imagine our disappointment when we were unable to retain the rights to the EPL for next year. Rest assured, we competed strongly for these rights and were willing to pay a large amount for them.
When we missed out we sought to reach an arrangement with Optus so that we could continue delivering great EPL coverage to all Australian fans. Unfortunately Optus was not open to the deal we proposed.
Since then we have been working hard on alternative arrangements and we have come up with something that ensures that our customers will have access to more great European football than ever before.
Last month we announced a deal to add three beIN SPORTS channels for our customers. From Saturday, May 14 these new channels will bring our sports subscribers an amazing array of European football including UEFA Euro 2016, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Bundesliga. And all at no extra cost to our existing residential sports subscribers.
But for EPL fans, there is no substitute for EPL.
So, I am delighted to announce that we have secured rights to three new 24 hour channels from leading clubs Chelsea, Liverpool FC and Manchester United – and three new programming blocks from Arsenal, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur which will broadcast weekly on FOX SPORTS.
This means that all of our sports subscribers will have access to the games of these six clubs. The games will be available on a delayed basis – a game played during Saturday night at 12am AEST (3pm London) will be available to our viewers from 1pm AEST on Sundays.
Plus these services deliver exclusive access to each of the major clubs including pre-season games, player and management interviews, manager’s press conferences, and extended in-depth pre-match build up and post-match analysis.
These services, along with the three beIN SPORTS channels, will be automatically available to all of our residential sports subscribers at no additional cost – on the TV, on tablets and on smart phones.
At Foxtel we know how much Australians love sport and this exciting new EPL content will give fans an incredible range of programming and games to enjoy.
