Premier League clubs dealt MAJOR blow as huge TV broadcaster pulls out of running to show games

APPLE TV has effectively ruled itself out from bidding for the next round of Prem TV rights – a heavy blow to league bosses.

The next three-year bid for domestic rights, currently valued at around £3billion per season, will be sent out to broadcasters before the end of the year.

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League bosses are poised to greenlight an extension to 270 live TV games per season to boost the overall price.

But expectations that Apple TV would be interested in using one of the smaller packages to get into the Prem were dashed by Apple’s senior vice president Eddie Cue.

And Cue signaled the company was not keen on investing in the Prem unless it was in a deal to reflect their new £1.95billion exclusive global partnership with Major League Soccer.

Cue said, “I don’t like the word exclusivity because it’s important, but not that important.

“What matters to us are global rights.”

“We’re a global company, we have a large number of customers in every country in the world and it’s not exciting for me to have something that one person can have but not another.

“Another thing is that we are putting a significant amount of engineering and expertise into the MLS product and I cannot justify putting what I believe are the best engineers in the world into a small sub-product.

“It has to be a partnership because our investments are significant.”

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Cue further elaborated on whether that doesn’t imply significant interest in a Prem package, adding, “I never say never without knowing all the info.”

“But in general we never sign a deal with any league in any particular country or small subset of countries and I would say it’s highly unlikely we ever would.

“I don’t think we would ever do that.

“We wouldn’t want to invest in that because we’re not a typical investor trying to fill gaps.

“MLS is our number one and we want it to be a big hit.”

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