Premiership rights bidding war underway

The bidding war has begun in earnest after broadcasters were given a month to tender their offers to screen live Premier League football matches from 2007-08.

BSkyB's 13-year monopoly on showing live games was broken when league officials this week committed to ensuring no single broadcaster could buy rights to all of them.

Now - with seven years' discussion between the league and the European Commission having come to a head - broadcasters have been handed a deadline of April 27th to submit their bids.

Terrestrial television companies will battle it out with their satellite counterparts, with mobile-phone giants and broadband providers also in the shake-up.

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore explained: "Broadcasters are not obliged to put games on TV. All games could theoretically go to other forms of media. Companies can bid for all the packages but can only buy five, in which case if they win all six they will have to drop one.

"April 27th is the final date for the sealed bids for the live packages but we've already been talking to broadcasters for a number of months."

League representatives have split the games into six packages - each boasting 23 games due to be screened at different kick-off times.

The waters are then muddied further, with each package-holder given varying powers to choose the cream of each weekend's matches via an intricate system of first, second, third and fourth picks.

And Scudamore insisted each package was given sufficient weight to stop the heaviest bidder - BSkyB at the last auction - landing all the high-profile matches in any given week.

He said: "There is no package which is clearly the runt of the litter. It's hard to see which packages are better and which packages are worse although obviously they are not equal.

"In the previous auction the gradient in terms of attractiveness of each package was steep with it simply involving 38 first, second, third and fourth picks - now it is more shallow."