Premier Sports CEO: Viaplay takeover could take us to the next level

Premier Sports CEO Richard Sweeney believes the company’s acquisition by Viaplay could help them move to the next level.

Speaking on Tuesday, 16 August at the launch event for the broadcaster’s 2022/23 LaLiga coverage, Sweeney told reporters that investment from the Nordic streaming giant would take Premier Sports “to the next level”.

Sweeny said: “We built it maybe as far as we could on one person [owner Michael O’Rourke]. It’s been a significant investment, as we all know, sports rights are not cheap and there’s a lag between what you pay and how you drive subscriptions.

“Then someone of this nature comes in, they have the investment, they have the funding behind them that will then move it on to the next level.”

He added: “We got to a stage where we would have been really happy to carry on, but do you really want to jump the next level? You need somebody…the market has changed in a big way and you now have a couple of really major players. It’s going to be interesting.”

When questioned on whether this means Viaplay may challenge for premium rights such as the Premier League or Champions League, Sweeney thought that would be unlikely. Viaplay CEO Anders Jenson told Broadcast Sport last month that the Premier League is, “not very attractive” at the moment.

Sweeney said: “We feel like we have premium sports rights. The Premier League doesn’t come up until 2025/26, the Champions League was just done, so there’s quite a gap. We bought the Nations League, we bought all the European qualifiers with the exception of England, that’s the type of premium big investment we made before they came on board. Let’s see what happens, I’m sure they will have their own strategy.”

Sweeney also confirmed that, for now, it will be “business as usual”, except for an upcoming change of branding: “It will be the same channels, the same delivery. Maybe in the last quarter or the first quarter we may see the change of actual branding. Overall rights will very much stay as they are, but whenever there rights in the market it will be interesting to see - they have a bigger budget and are a public limited company.

“If you look at some of the other countries they are in, they like some of the major, major products.”

It was also confirmed that senior staff are expected to stay in their roles for the foreseeable future.

However, one change that is expected is that the Premier Player streaming service will eventually be replaced by the Viaplay platform: “Yeah, it’s going to be amalgamated. Why would you have them separate? I’m assuming this, as we haven’t discussed that. It’s crossing the Ts and dotting the Is at the moment, but you’d have to assume that after a takeover from a company they would migrate into a ‘one stop shop’ as such. However, we haven’t got to that level yet.”