Premier League broadcasting rights are set for another shake-up with Apple lining up an offer to obtain streaming rights from 2025.
The tech giants are engaged in a wider battle with Amazon to increase their streaming portfolio and view English football as a key market in which to expand. Amazon's Prime service already has exclusive rights in the UK to show two rounds of Premier League fixtures a season - a deal worth £30million a year that runs until 2025.
According to Bloomberg, Apple may also be interested in showing EFL games. Their next cycle begins in 2024. Negotiations typically take place a year to 18 months before renewals.
The Premier League's current broadcasting cycle, which began last year, is worth a total £10.4bn - with £5.1bn of that coming from the domestic deal with Sky Sports, BT, Amazon and BBC, who paid £211.5m to show highlights for three seasons.
Apple last year began streaming Major League Baseball on Friday nights, having secured a $85m per season deal, and the firm have also recently signed a $2.5bn contract to stream Major League Soccer games for the next 10 years - an agreement that America's top domestic division has framed as transformative.
They have not committed huge amounts of original programming in the manner of Netflix, with Ted Lasso their only notable hit to date, but sources indicate they view rights for live sporting events as a key area of growth.
And that comes against a backdrop of significant issues in America among regional sports networks - stations who have rights to show their local teams in action, many of them owned by the same people in charge of teams - and the success of league’s streaming games themselves via their own mobile and TV apps.
The continuing proliferation of broadcasting value in English football has been seen as a key reason for the swell of interest from American investors in Premier League clubs over the past decade.
Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly has previously spoken of the room to grow that area - despite the Premier League already being miles ahead of their continental competitors. Officials in other leagues, including Spain and Germany, have argued that English clubs now have an insurmountable financial advantage.
Last week Aleksandr Ceferin, the UEFA president, said that English clubs deserve praise for that amid calls for the governing body to do more around ensuring a level playing field.
