SKY has been awarded a new four-year deal with the Scottish FA for exclusive live rights to the Scottish Cup starting next season, as well as five long-term rights agreements across five other different sports. These include the 2017 British & Irish Lions Tour, Super League rugby from 2017, England overseas cricket, speedway from this April and sports entertainment leader, WWE starting next year. The deals say the company “will further strengthen the unrivalled breadth and quality of coverage on Sky Sports and come on the back of strong growth in audiences.”
The new agreements add to a line-up of live sport on Sky Sports, which include every match in the ICC World Twenty20, the launch of live coverage of Euro 2016 qualifiers and the Ryder Cup from Gleneagles.
David Rey, managing director of Sky Business, said, “Sky Sports had an excellent year in 2013 and we’re looking forward to an outstanding line-up for our customers in 2014. These agreements secure even more fantastic live sport for our pub customers, offering them unrivalled breadth and quality that drives footfall and increases dwell times throughout the entire year, every day of the week.”
Sky has been awarded a new four-year deal with the Scottish FA for exclusively live rights of the Scottish Cup, Scotland international friendly fixtures and coverage of the Scottish FA Youth Cup until the end of the 2017/18 season. With deals already in place to show all of Scotland’s UEFA EURO 2016 and 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification matches, as well as 30 matches a season from the SPFL, Sky remains the home of Scottish football domestically and internationally. This new agreement includes nine fixtures from each round of the Scottish Cup, including Semi-Finals – one exclusively live – and Final live in the UK and Republic of Ireland, all of Scotland’s home friendly international matches from 2014 to 2018 and exclusively live matches from Scotland’s premier Under-20 tournament featuring youth teams of senior Scottish clubs.
Sky has been awarded a new five-year Super League deal from 2017, taking the partnership between Sky and the RFL beyond 30 years. This new agreement will guarantee Sky viewers live rugby league for at least eight more seasons. The new agreement with WWE, the worldwide leader in sports entertainment, includes the popular weekly programmes RAW®, SmackDown®, WWE Main Event®, and WWE Experience®, which is due to feature all the WWE superstars, including John Cena, Randy Orton, CM Punk, Big SHOW and DANIEL BRYAN. Sky will also offer 12 special events a year on a pay-per-view basis, including WrestleMania®, Royal Rumble®, SummerSlam®, Survivor Series® and Money in the Bank®.
Sky has secured two more England overseas tours as part of a new deal for cricket from New Zealand. The agreement includes the next two tours in 2018 and 2020, as well as New Zealand’s home series with West Indies, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Australia, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and South Africa. The coverage complements Sky’s year-round coverage of live cricket which includes all England home Tests, One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 matches, at least 60 live county fixtures, plus live cricket from Australia, South Africa, India and West indies.
