Premiership clubs' £1bn jackpot

The Premier League clubs hit a cash jackpot today as the new television deal was bought for £1.1 billion by Sky and the BBC.

As the Premiership chairmen were leaving the meeting they were said to be "delighted" after they accepted the deal negotiated by chief executive Richard Scudamore.

Sky will continue to show live Premiership football exclusively. Under the deal, it won four sets of live packages, the Sunday and Monday live games which it currently shows and two new Saturday packages at 1.15pm and 5.15pm. Sky paid £1.024 billion for the deal.

In a widely predicted but significant switch, the BBC has won back Match of the Day from ITV for £105m, after it was dramatically lost three years ago.

The news of the deal for three years from 2004/5 will be a massive boost to the 20 top clubs.

Even though the number of live games has increased to 138 from 106, the package is well above what was predicted and matches the previous deal at £1.1 billion three years ago. The Premier League are also confident that the European Commission will not intervene to ban the deal.

One of the EC's key concerns was new media rights for mobile phones and the internet, these have not yet been sold, and when they are, along with the rights for foreign countries and the Irish rights, the deal is expected to get close to the £1.6 billion all round total that was achieved last time.