Since the turn of century, All major sports around the world have got massive cash injections largely thanks to lucrative domestic and oversees TV deals. These days watching any major sports live on TV require you to buy expensive subscriptions specially in the developed countries and renounded TV networks are not afraid to spend big and securing TV deals of major sports competitions. American sports like NFL, NBA and MLB leads the way in largest TV deals ever signed in the world while recent trend in european football, specially English Premier League’s new TV deal has put them at almost the same level as major american sports. We take a look some of the largest sports TV deals currently active.
The biggest sports TV deals ever ?: When it comes to broadcasting rights contract, NFL is pretty much the godfather in sports with their absolute mammoth domestic deal with not one but 4 high profile US tv networks (CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN). Four major networks signed a 9 year (2014-2022) TV deal with NFL to share broadcasting rights of american fotoball in the US. Four networks will be paying around $39.6 billion combined over the next 9 years to NFL. Thats over $4.5 billion a year for NFL. No other sport or major competition TV deal even come close to this. We take a look at other top 10 TV deals around the world.
| NO# | SPORT | TV DEAL | Average Yearly |
| 1 | NFL | $39.6 billion (NFL signed a new 9 year deal from 2014 to 2022 with four US networks CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN) | $4.5 billion a year in combine payments from four networks |
| 2 | NBA | $24 billion (ESPN & TNT extended their NBA deal by further 9 years from 2016 to 2025. ). | $2.6 billion a year in combine payments from (ESPN:$1.4b, TNT $1.2b) |
| 3 | Premier League | £5.1 billion ($7bn) Premier League’s new 3 year domestic deal with Sky & BT will run from 2016 to 2019. Sky to pay total of £4.2bn and BT £960m. (oversees rights money not included here) | £1.8 billion a year (Sky will pay £1.39 billion a year and BT around £320m a year. |
| 4 | MLB (Baseball) | $12.4 billion (MLB signed 9 year deal fron 2014 to 2022 with three US networks Fox, TBS and ESPN) | £1.3 billion a year in combine payments from three networks |
| 5 | Serie A (Football) | €2.82 billion (Serie A signed a new 3 year domestic tv deal with Sky Italia & Media pro (2015 to 2018) | €943 million a year |
| 6 | Bundesliga (Football) | €4.64 billion (Sky Germany & EuroSport share broadcasting rights for Bundesliga in 4 year deal from 2017-18 season to 2020-2021 season) | €1.159 billion a year in combined payment (sky has 80% of broadcasting rights) |
| 7 | La Liga (Football) | €2.65 billion (3 year domestic TV rights deal with Movistar and Mediapro sharing rights in Spain) | €883 million a year |
| 8 | NHL (Ice Hockey) | $5.2 billion (NHL signed a 12 year deal with Canadian network Rogers Sportsnet back in 2013) | €454 million a year |
| 9 | IPL (Cricket) | $1.6 billion (IPL renegotiated a new 10 year TV rights deal in India with Sony Network) | $160 million a year |
| 10 | AFL (Aussie football) | AUD$2.508 billion (AFL signed record breaking 5-year TV deal. The biggest in Australian broadcasting history) | AUD$418 million a year. |
