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Apple is preparing to jump into the ring for TV rights bidding that could place some of next seasons Premier League UK football games directly on Apple TV set-top boxes.
The Daily Mail is reporting that the company would like to add more exclusive content to their set-top box in order to entice customers to purchase the units.
Buying content to entice users is nothing new for the team at Apple TV customers in Canada and the United States already have access to Wall Street Journal video from their boxes, a deal that was launched in 2011.
If Apple enters the space speculation has begun that Google will quickly follow suit, creating a bidding war for licensed content. The Premier League in turn could reap the benefits of duel bidding.
It’s still unclear at this time if the events would be offered for free to buyers or through a subscription model. In any case the cost of buying those rights won’t come cheap, Google and Apple will be pitted against Sky TV, ESPN and even the Middle Eastern owned Al Jazeera. Under their current rights package Sky paid 1.6 billion pounds, that’s nearly $2.5 Billion dollars.
At this point the story is completely speculative which means we could be waiting a while to find out if bids have been placed.
Do you think Google or Apple purchasing UK TV rights to the countries largest sport can help them increase market share for their set-top boxes?
