Sky exceed the expected limit in order to hang on to their Premier League rights

Those who flip the burgers and tend the car parks at Premier League grounds may cling to the hope that the new Sky and BT deals will result in something approaching a decent wage for their work but while they wait for the billions to "trickle down", players and agents will be giddily anticipating a three-year long monsoon.

The numbers announced are, for the rest of us, eye-watering. Analysts had been predicting a near 50 per cent hike on the billion pounds per year the two media giants currently shell out between them to screen what is routinely billed by them as the greatest sporting show on earth. In the end, the increase was 71 per cent with Sky agreeing to fork out €5.36 billion over the three seasons starting in August of next year for 378 games. Their rivals will be chipping in €1.29 billion for 126 games, a whopping total of some €6.9 billion.

When the two deals are combined, the pair will be paying an astonishing €13.73 million per game. The upshot is that the top-earning club each season will earn some €210 million with the one that fares worst still pocketing €133 million.

To provide some sort of context, Real Madrid and Barcelona earned €140 million from their domestic TV rights deals last season, Bayern Munich just €37 million; a three-televised match Sunday like the one Sky staged last weekend would yield in a matter of hours the entire annual turnover of the FAI and, as Premier League chief Richard Scudamore pointed out as he announced details of the deal: "Burnley are bigger than Ajax which says a lot about how our league is made up."

Well, it certainly says a lot about something.

The ‘talent’

Aside from the clubs and the “talent”, BT look to have come out of things fairly well. At a time when they are committed to paying Uefa €403 million a season starting later this year for the Champions and Europa League rights, while also being embroiled in huge corporate takeover, they have paid a little short of 20 per cent more for 10 per cent more games.

They have not landed the prime package of 28 late Sunday afternoon games with its 18 first picks (the option to show the best game in a given weekend) but they have held what they had and then just a little which will, they will feel, give them enough of a Premier League presence to help justify the subscription fees that are apparently on the way in the UK where their broadband customers have thus far had access to their sports offering for free.

Sky, on the other hand, have coughed up like a company that sensed it was in deep trouble if it did not retain the lion’s share of the games and, despite the enormous cost, Rupert Murdoch’s men will be desperately relieved to have kept as many matches as it was entitled to under the bidding process’ rules.

To do so, though, they have agreed to hand over 83 per cent more money than they did three years ago. At just short of €15 million per game for their packages, the new figure is roughly 20 times what their first deal back in the early to mid-nineties cost them.

Significantly, the increase per year of around €830 million is more than half the entire company's most recent annual profits and hefty increases in subscription rates can surely be expected even at a time when the Champions League will be vanishing from its schedules.

Bad news

That will be bad news for the clubs’ burger flippers and millions of other low-paid workers if they are Sky subscribers but of less concern to the few hundred players whose incomes have kept pace rather nicely with the increased revenues that have flowed from these television rights deals.

In the 2000/01 season, for instance, Sky paid nearly £170 million for its allocation of live games and Manchester United’s wage bill was some £50 million. A decade later the corresponding figures were £600 million (up 252 per cent) and £153 million (up 206 per cent).

The trajectories continue to look broadly similar and while a small number of clubs almost every year maintain a tight grip on their finances so as to not to be hit too hard by relegation (which, of course, is almost always the result) wages at most have simply spiralled to the point where the average at this stage is around €3.5 million per player per season.

With even middle-ranking players able to aspire to that sort of salary, it’s no surprise so much overseas talent has been attracted to England and wages for the elite have gone stratospheric. These deals, along with those relating to highlights and overseas rights, are bound to maintain, even accelerate that upward momentum.

No prizes, though, for guessing who will be paying their wages when the cost of the contracts really do trickle down.