The English Premier League (EPL) stands as the leading football competition globally, consistently attracting viewers across every populated continent. Its significance is reflected in impressive metrics: approximately 33.9 million people in the UK (55% of the total UK TV audience) tuned in for live Premier League matches and Match of the Day highlights during the 2024/25 season. However, these impressive statistics, focusing only on the domestic audience, conceal a crucial shift in the league’s economic structure. Analyzing recent trends, particularly data from the 2024/25 season and the valuation of the 2025-2029 broadcast cycle, reveals a notable paradox at the heart of the Premier League’s financial success.
The league is broadcast in 189 countries, making it accessible to nearly 900 million homes worldwide. This vast reach translates into an estimated 1.87 billion people who follow the league globally, interacting with its content at least once a week. Significantly, the fanbase is rapidly expanding, with 34% of these global followers having developed their interest within the last four years, indicating aggressive international market expansion.
The Premier League’s long-term financial stability and increasing broadcast value are now primarily driven by rapid international market expansion, especially in the United States. This global growth is compensating for recent marginal but statistically significant declines in traditional domestic viewership ahead of the new, record-breaking broadcast cycle. By examining UK viewership data, highlighting the explosive growth in the US, and measuring the league’s global reach, this statistics piece will demonstrate that the EPL has evolved from a UK-focused spectacle to a truly international media product with significant economic consequences for its clubs.
Premier League New Broadcast Partners 2025-28
The Premier League’s 2025-28 broadcast cycle features an extensive global network of rights holders spanning Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and MENA, ensuring worldwide distribution across TV, digital, and streaming platforms.
| Region / Territory | Broadcaster(s) / Rights Holder(s) |
|---|---|
| Europe |
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| Asia-Pacific |
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| Middle East & North Africa (MENA) |
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| Americas |
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| Audio (UK) |
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| Other |
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Sources: Premier League
Domestic Premier League Viewership Drops in the Lead-Up to the New Broadcast Cycle
EPL viewership figures show a 14% year-on-year decline in average domestic audiences for the 2024/25 season, continuing a wider downward trend ahead of the league’s next, and most lucrative broadcast rights cycle, valued at £6.7 billion for 2025–2028.
Broadcaster Breakdown
- Sky Sports, the EPL’s primary UK broadcaster, recorded a 10% decline, averaging 1.57 million viewers (down from 1.78 million in the 2023/24 season).
- TNT Sports experienced a 5% drop in its Saturday lunchtime slot and a steeper 17% decline when midweek fixtures were included, averaging 0.95 million in 2024/25.
- The combined average match audience fell to 2.52 million, down from 2.93 million in the previous season, representing a 14% drop year-on-year compared to 2023/24.
Source: Inside World Football
Reasons Behind the Decline
The drop in viewership has been linked to several factors:
- Decreased competitive tension, highlighted by Liverpool securing the title early and limited relegation drama in the season’s final weeks.
- Greater EFL coverage on Sky Sports under a new rights deal, potentially diverting attention from Premier League matches.
- The rise of illegal streaming and increased entertainment fragmentation.
International Impact
The downturn wasn’t limited to the UK. NBC Sports in the US reported a 7% year-on-year ratings decline, signalling a broader dip in global attention.
Looking Ahead: Record New Rights Cycle
Despite the softening viewership numbers, the Premier League enters its highest-value domestic media cycle ever in 2025/26:
- Sky Sports will expand from 128 to 215 live matches, gaining all Sunday fixtures.
- TNT Sports will retain 52 live matches.
- Amazon Prime Video will exit the live rights market.
The rights consolidation is expected to simplify fan access, though it places added pressure on broadcasters to maintain engagement across a significantly expanded match inventory.
Premier League Broadcast Deals for 2025-2028: Breakdown
The Premier League’s broadcast deals for the 2025-2028 cycle are valued as follows:
- The total domestic broadcasting rights deal in the UK is worth approximately £6.7 billion over four years, averaging about £1.67 billion per season. This includes Sky Sports securing the majority with around £5.12 billion for live matches, TNT Sports with about £1.28 billion, and the BBC retaining the highlights package valued at roughly £300 million.
- Internationally, the Premier League’s broadcast rights are valued at approximately £6.5 billion over three years (2025-28), averaging around £2.1 billion per year. Key markets such as the United States alone contribute about £378 million annually, with the Middle East & North Africa at £150 million, and Southeast Asia around £80 million.
- Combining both domestic and international deals, the total revenue for the Premier League’s media rights for the upcoming cycle is approximately £3.84 billion per season, marking an increase of about £420 million over the current cycle.
These figures confirm the Premier League’s position as the most valuable football broadcast property globally, driven by both strong domestic sales and rapidly growing international markets.
Source: Salary Leaks
- The UK domestic deal spans 4 years and is worth £6.7 billion.
- International deals sum approximately £6.5 billion over 3 years (roughly £2.1 billion annually), covering regions such as the Americas, Europe (outside the UK), Asia-Pacific, MENA, and others.
This new deal cycle is historically significant as it confirms the decisive shift in the league’s revenue composition: international broadcasting revenue has now surpassed domestic income.
EPL Broadcast Revenue by Cycle
The Premier League’s broadcast revenue has grown significantly across recent rights cycles, driven largely by the rapid expansion of international demand. The data below highlights how overseas income has not only overtaken domestic rights in relative share but has become the primary engine of total revenue growth. Together, these trends show how the league’s global footprint continues to strengthen across each broadcast cycle.
| Premier League Broadcast Revenue Trajectory by Cycle (International vs. Domestic) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadcast Cycle | Domestic Value (£B) | International Value (£B) | Total Rights Value (£B) | International Share |
| 2019–2022 | £5.0 Billion | £4.2 Billion | £9.2 Billion | 45.6% |
| 2022–2025 | £5.1 Billion | £5.3 Billion | £10.4 Billion | 51.0% |
| 2025–2028 | £6.7 Billion (4-year) | £6.5 Billion (3-year) | £13.2 Billion | ~56% (Annual) |
Premier League Payments of Broadcast and Central Commercial Revenues to Clubs
The league generates revenue from three primary streams: domestic rights (held by Sky Sports, TNT Sports, and BBC), international rights, and central commercial revenues (£7.9 million per club). This income is distributed to the 20 clubs through a combination of equal share payments (50% of domestic and 100% of international revenue), merit payments (based on final league position), and facility fees (based on the number of televised matches). The growth trajectory clearly illustrates the strategic importance of global markets over the last decade. The charts below indicate data sourced from the Premier League, regarding the value of domestic and international payments of broadcast and central commercial revenues to clubs.
Source: Premier League
Source: Premier League
The American Boom
The Premier League’s performance in the United States stands as the greatest success story of its international strategy and the primary driver of its overall broadcast valuation. NBCUniversal, which holds the US rights through the 2027/28 season via a six-year, $2.7 billion deal, has overseen a near-exponential growth trajectory that began when they first secured the rights in 2013.
Historically, US audiences averaged only 414,000 viewers per match window in the 2012/13 season. This figure peaked at a record 546,000 Total Audience Delivery (TAD) per match during the 2023/24 campaign. However, mirroring the UK, the 2024/25 season saw a marginal dip in average viewership, falling by approximately 7% to 510,000 TAD.
Crucially, this marginal dip in linear TAD must be qualified by the continued growth in consumption measured in minutes. In the 2024/25 season, US fans consumed a record 17.14 billion minutes of Premier League action across all NBCUniversal platforms. This high consumption rate highlights a market that is not shrinking, but rather evolving toward a fragmented, on-demand viewing pattern.
Sources: NBC Sports
The rise of the Peacock streaming service is central to the US strategy. Peacock, which streams all 380 matches, delivered four of the seven most-streamed EPL matches ever in the US during the 2024/25 season, and fans streamed over 4 billion minutes of action on the platform for the second consecutive year. The US market’s willingness to embrace a blended model of linear TV and subscription streaming, coupled with premium rights valuation, establishes it as the league’s most commercially vital international territory.
The Digital Frontier: Streaming and Social Engagement
The 2024/25 data confirms that traditional linear metrics are no longer the sole, or even the most important, indicator of engagement; the digital frontier has redefined how viewership is quantified. The decline in UK linear TV must be understood as a consequence of this ongoing digital transformation, rather than a failure of the product itself.
The league is successfully migrating audiences to its streaming partners, exemplified by the US figures, where Peacock accounts for an increasing share of total consumption minutes. This shift is crucial because streaming allows the league and its partners to measure metrics more aligned with modern media habits, such as Total Minutes Consumed (17.14 billion in the US) and Average Minute Audience (AMA), rather than just peak concurrent viewers.
Furthermore, social media platforms are acting as indispensable engagement and acquisition tools. NBC Sports’ Premier League social accounts reported record consumption in 2024/25, with:
- Impressions increase 15% year-on-year.
- Video views jump 34% year-on-year.
- The NBC Sports YouTube channel accumulated over 1.2 billion minutes watched for the third consecutive season.
This immense digital engagement, particularly among younger, mobile-first audiences, acts as the primary engine for sustained global growth. The Premier League effectively uses platforms to drive interest that converts into paid consumption on streaming services. The ability to control and monetize these digital distribution channels globally is a significant competitive advantage over other European leagues reliant on legacy pay-TV structures. The future growth will be found in converting these billions of minutes of free-to-access social consumption into subscription revenue across all international markets.
Conclusion
The analysis of EPL viewership statistics confirms a league operating in a new, dual-faceted equilibrium. Domestically, the Premier League faces the same pressures as all legacy broadcast properties: marginal contraction in traditional linear viewing figures, driven by the fragmentation of the media landscape and the decline of traditional pay-TV subscriptions. This decline, evidenced by the 14% drop in average domestic viewership in the 2024/25 season, is a symptom of market change, not a sign of fundamental weakness in the product.
In sharp contrast, the international market continues its aggressive upward trajectory. The success of the international rights, now commanding a higher valuation than the domestic package, secures the league’s economic future.
In short, the Premier League’s status as the world’s most valuable football competition is now financially underpinned by the vast, geographically diverse audience represented by the £6.5 billion international deal. Future strategy will focus less on reversing UK linear trends and more on maintaining digital dominance, innovating streaming products, and penetrating high-growth markets across Asia and Africa.