04 November 0005

Premier League Productions: Building a Centralised Production Unit

In 2007, the Premier League’s commercial strategy shifted significantly. For the first time, international rights were sold not only to traditional broadcasters but also to telecommunications companies (such as Singtel). These new customers represented a massive revenue opportunity, but they faced a critical hurdle: unlike traditional networks, they possessed no internal production infrastructure. They could not take a raw satellite feed; they needed finished programming.

To unlock this market, we had to evolve the operation fundamentally. We moved from acting solely as a production company to operating as a full-scale broadcaster. In 2010, we secured approval to launch a 24/7 TV channel, doubling the budget overnight to transform our workflow.

We expanded beyond the core offering of 380 live matches and standard magazine shows (like Premier League World and Netbusters). We built dedicated studios, integrated Virtual Reality (VR) graphics, and hired a scheduling team to manage continuous 24-hour output, including Premier League News, Football Today, and international Fanzone phone-ins.

Crucially, we refined the editorial voice to match our global distribution, diversifying our roster of presenters and guests to ensure relevance to audiences in Asia and Africa. By the peak of this operation, we managed over 200 staff every weekend, routing a sophisticated network of feeds from every stadium back to our central hub.

This Centralised Production Unit became the cornerstone of the commercial model, giving the Premier League the confidence to sell to any buyer—regardless of their technical capability—thereby maximising the value of every deal.