Price to Show U.K. Soccer Rises by 69%

England's Premier League, one of the world's most popular soccer organizations, said that two companies agreed to pay £3 billion ($4.67 billion) for the UK broadcasting rights to three years of live matches, 69% more than broadcasters paid for similar rights in 2009.

British Sky Broadcasting Group, the longtime foundation of the league's UK broadcasting package, agreed to pay £2.28 billion for the exclusive rights to show 116 live matches a year from 2013 to 2016. That is £700 million more than the pay-TV giant paid for a deal during the last auction in 2009. And in a surprise, the league said telecom company BT Group had won the exclusive rights to show the remaining 38 games each year. Paying £738 million for the three-year package, BT muscled out Walt Disney's ESPN, which has been showing a small package of live games. The windfall for the English Premier League shows how the value of sports rights continues to skyrocket as pay-TV operators increasingly seek to lock down reliably popular content in a fragmented media world, where the Internet has threatened their hold on viewers.