Facebook likely to bid for Premier League broadcast rights

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Bengaluru, October 5: One of the most popular online social media networking tool Facebook is likely to enter the football market by bidding for Premier League broadcast rights next year.

Currently BT and Sky Sports have the television rights of Premier League, which has much fan following all over the world.

With England's next three-year cycle of domestic and international broadcast deals set to be auctioned next year, there are indications that Facebook, will launch a strong bid as evident from its Head of Sports Dan Reed's recent comments.

"The Premier League is a very important partner of ours and we work with them very closely.

"But it would be premature to speculate how we might approach that opportunity -- it's still very early days and there is no template for this.''

Pressed further if he was not ruling out a bid, Reed said, "That speaks for itself.''

Facebook has already made its presence felt in football as most of the players are quite active on the social media while several clubs and leagues use their platform to sell tickets and merchandise.

The world's largest free-to-air platform already has broadcast deals with Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the World Surf League and going by early signs, it looks as though, the online giant is set to add football to its roaster by bidding for the plum Premier League television rights.