- Premier League + will be available in Singapore from next season
- Platform will be operated in partnership with StarHub
- Masters says league still sees “lots of oxygen left” in media rights sales business
The Premier League is going direct-to-consumer (DTC) for the first time with the launch of a 24/7 streaming service in Singapore – and could bring the platform to other markets around the world.
Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London, Premier League chief executive Richard Masters confirmed that the platform will broadcast all 380 top-flight games in Singapore from the start of the 2026/27 season, along with a range of shoulder content.
English soccer’s top flight has long been linked with launching a global streaming service, a concept which up until now has been referred to as ‘Premflix’.
However, Masters said the new platform will be called Premier League + and be operated in partnership with Singaporean telecommunications giant StarHub, which is in the middle of a six-year rights deal signed with the competition in 2022.
Masters did not confirm the pricing plan for Premier League +, nor did he expand on how marketing and production costs and subscription revenue will be shared between the competition and StarHub.
However, he did say that the platform gives the Premier League “more optionality” and suggested that the organisation could adopt a similar approach in other markets if the move is successful.
“From next season onwards, Premier League + – rather than Premflix – is going to happen,” Masters said. “So, for the first time, the Premier League is going to have its own customers, it’s going to have to deal with promotion, pricing, churn, distribution, all of those things.
“We’re looking to build a business, but we’re also looking to learn to see how that might be replicable around the world.”
Masters said as far back as 2022 that the competition had retained an option to go DTC in select markets as part of some of its overseas broadcast agreements. At the time, it was reported that the competition had considered piloting a streaming service in Singapore in 2019, only for clubs to reject the idea.
However, speculation intensified after the league announced that it would be ending its long-running production partnership with agency giant IMGreducing some of the barriers to the Premier League launching its own service.
“We’ve now taken control of our content,” Masters said. “It allows us to look at different ways of developing our content for different audiences. So again, it allows us to look differently into the future, and it may become a business centre in its own right, but I think it does make all of those different options we have in front of us more easy to execute.”
Unlike other European soccer leagues, the Premier League has enjoyed sustained growth in the value of its international media rights, reducing the need for the competition to forego the guaranteed revenues of a traditional broadcast deal in favour of going DTC.
The league generated UK£12.25 billion in broadcast and commercial revenue for the 2025 to 2028 cycle and Masters revealed that international media rights income alone is up 27 per cent.
Even so, the launch of Premier League + will only fuel further speculation that the competition could eventually make more money by operating the service globally. Despite that, Masters noted that the league still sees “lots of oxygen left” in its media rights business.
“International growth has been the area where I think the Premier League has done better than its competitive set,” Masters added. “We’ve grown our market share to 50 per cent of the big five leagues.
“We’re looking at our media right sales business going forward, we’re still active in the market. So we’re looking at 2028/29 numbers right now. We’re seeing no loss of engagement, or lack of engagement, or reduction of engagement at all – the opposite, I think.
“There’s huge interest in the Premier League around the world. The markets out there have challenges and opportunities in them and there will be some ups and downs, but I’m confident that we’re going to continue to see growth.”
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