UTV Media plc has today announced that the world’s biggest sports radio station, talkSPORT, has extended it’s international partnership with the Premier League for another three years, taking it to 2019.
The London-based station has been re-appointed as the Premier League’s global audio partner, continuing on from it’s original four year agreement which was due to expire at the end of the 2015/16 season.
UTV Media plc Chief Operating Officer, Scott Taunton, said, “In the two years since its appointment as the Premier League’s global audio partner, talkSPORT has established itself as a truly international sports media brand. Today’s announcement means we can extend talkSPORT into even more markets, as well as creating new opportunities for advertisers and sponsors. I’m pleased that talkSPORT’s ever growing international audience will now be able to look forward to listening to our world class live coverage of the Barclays Premier League for a further three seasons.”
Under the agreement, talkSPORT has an exclusive package of interation audio rights in all languages and territories outside the UK and Ireland, to provide official live commentary of all 380 Barclays Premier League matches in any language.
talkSPORT has broadcast partners in 25 countries including the USA, China, Malaysia, Egypt, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. The station provides live commentary and football programming in nine languages including English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, French and Bahasa Indonesia.
As well as broadcast partnerships, talkSPORT also has tie-ups with audio streaming partners such as radio app TuneIn Radio, Chinese sports website Usportnews.com and football app OneFootball which all broadcast talkSPORT’s international commentary.
The new agreement follows the network’s highest ever listening figures in the UK, according to the latest RAJAR figures, with 3.4 million sports fans tuning in every week.
Since becoming global audio partner of the Premier League, talkSPORT.com has been redesigned to appeal to an international audience, with editorial content and live audio available in multiple languages. The website now attracts almost half (44%) of its visitors from outside the UK, according to the latest figures. Last month it also achieved a record breaking number of visitors with 4.7 million users and 32 million page views.
Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Scudamore, said, “talkSPORT has for many years produced high quality radio commentary of Barclays Premier League matches in the UK, and successfully extended this to an international audience when they became our first global audio licensee two seasons ago.
“We are extremely pleased that we will continue this partnership and look forward to working with them as they make Barclays Premier League radio commentary available in more languages and to more countries around the world.”