stevegrant

This is how the cash was distributed last season: Based on that distribution model, and on the assumption that the overseas rights increase in line with the domestic ones (a conservative estimate, as they have increased at a much faster rate in the last decade), that means the "equal share" part of the deal would see EVERY Premier League club guaranteed £88.83m every season, plus a guaranteed £13m for 10 "facility fee" payments.

That theory was always based on any competition with Sky being led by a company with limited resources. BT weren't ever considered as a broadcaster until three years ago, and it's changed everything.

Sky has packages A, C, D, E and G. BT has packages B and F. Total value £5.136bn

Sky retains 4pm "Super Sunday" games.

Subscriptions. If you are a Sky subscriber with the most basic package, you would have to pay £24.50 a month to add Sky Sports. Over a year (and it's a minimum 12-month contract, of course), that's £294. Throw in the fact that many Sky Sports subscribers will also be paying for other bits of the Sky TV package (up to around £70 for the "everything" package now, I think), plus phone and broadband services which cost the square root of **** all to provide but rake in a fortune, PLUS advertising revenue, and they still turn a very tidy profit.

The only "surprise" will be the amount paid, I suspect. It'll be Sky and BT divvying it up between them, just depends how desperate Sky are to keep hold of their Super Sunday monopoly.

Most likely divided between BT and Sky again, as it sounds as though Discovery (who own Eurosport) decided against bidding in the end. There are 14 additional games in the new contract, meaning 168 of the 380 Premier League matches will be televised live in the UK from the 2016/17 season to the 2018/19 season. This is how the current deal is divided up: As you can see, the extra games are spread evenly across all 7 packages. The only rules are that no single broadcaster is allowed to show more than 126 games (a combination of 4 of the 28-game packages and one of the 14-game ones). New to this deal is a Friday night slot, with up to 10 matches to be shown on Friday nights - these games are in the same package as Monday nights. At least 18 of the 28 games must be shown on Mondays, with the remainder on Fridays. It's entirely possible that there might be NO Friday games at all, depending on what the winning broadcaster wants to do. The most interesting thing of note in that particular package is that there aren't even any SECOND-choice matches in it, it's only third- and fourth-choice games. In the current deal, 12 of the games in that package are second-choice. The first-choice picks have been spread out much more than the current deal, which could be seen as a bit of a blow to BT if they were aiming to keep what they already have. You would assume Sky will go all-in to ensure they keep their "Super Sunday" package (package D, with 18 first-choice games, and probably C as well, with 15 second-choice games), but the Saturday lunchtime slot which BT has at the moment has had the number of first picks cut from 13 to 6, so they'll almost certainly be throwing their weight in with a few of the other packages as well. With this ****-waving contest between the two broadcasters, the ultimate winners are the clubs, who will see another massive hike in broadcasting revenue and prize money. The existing deal is worth just over £3bn, it's not too far-fetched to think it'll be another 50% on top of that for the next deal. The losers, of course, are the fans who actually go to the games and have more games rearranged for TV, and paying subscribers who will presumably have to foot the bill for the increased price of acquiring the rights.

New domestic TV deal details to be revealed at 5pm today. Sounds like Discovery (who own Eurosport) haven't entered the race in the end, despite many suggestions they would.

Liverpool fans now know why everyone else laughed at Rafa Benitez after his "facts" press conference

Their next 8 games (maybe 9 if Everton sort themselves out) are terrible but their last 5 are all winnable. As long as they're not out of sight by then (which they shouldn't be, considering how crap the other teams down there have been), they'll still have a great chance of staying up.

I wonder if they'll put in an official complaint at having to play against two teams at once if they lose to Dagenham & Redbridge tonight.

Pellè just looks knackered to me, we've not been able to rest him because of injuries elsewhere. Rodriguez has taken much longer than most expected to recover (despite original predictions of a Christmas return, I'm now not expecting to see him play this season), Long has got injured at a difficult time for us and Gallagher has had a series of issues (and I'm not entirely convinced by him anyway). While in most games we've played quite a patient game, on Saturday this was difficult because of the pitch. You couldn't play a 10-yard pass with any degree of confidence, so as a result we ended up playing quite direct, but neither Mané or Elia really got close enough to Pellè to profit from his hold-up play, which is excellent but he can't be expected to hold it up AND beat the entire back 4. It's also been noticeable that our final ball has got progressively worse over the course of the season. Crosses are either under- or over-hit, corners are dealt with too easily and we're trying to be far too clever around the edge of the penalty area to fashion clear openings when sometimes you've only got a half-chance available.

Nurse!

It's a strange one, as we certainly don't look as free-flowing as we did back in September/October, and yet we've won 4 on the spin away from home and are the fifth-highest scorers in the league. Our eyes see us labour a bit up front, appear to lack a bit of clinical finishing, and yet we're still winning games.

I'd have thought that most of the idiots would have got the "Mané is rubbish" nonsense out of their system by now, considering how crucial he's been in recent games. All of his goals have been important: Stoke (home) - only goal of the game. Palace (away) - first goal, win comfortably thereafter Chelsea (home) - first goal, got a point Arsenal (home) - first goal, win comfortably thereafter QPR (away) - only goal of the game. Sure, he's going to be a bit inconsistent at times, he's still only 22 years old, but he's already shown that he comes up trumps at key moments in big games.

It would be quite handy if Hugo Lloris would pick up a knock as well, he's kept them in the games that Kane and Eriksen have subsequently gone on to win. Their defence ALWAYS looks likely to concede goals, but continually gets bailed out by a genuinely world-class keeper.

Leicester release a statement saying Pearson is still in charge.

To be fair to Watson, he's got the Pro Licence, so he's perfectly qualified to be getting involved in that sort of stuff as well as his specialist goalkeeping duties.

We are on the verge of another club record, never before have we won 8 league games away from home in a top-flight season. Even in 83/84 when we finished runners-up to Liverpool, we only won 7 away games.

Not sure if any of the live coverage on streams picked up on it, but the pitch was an absolute disgrace yesterday. Both sides could barely pass the ball 5 yards as it would just bobble up off the pitch and hit a shin or knee

Whisper it quietly, but Thameslink managed to run a perfectly acceptable service at peak times for an entire week this week. Genuinely shocked.

Criminally overlooked

As far as I'm aware, that's sort-of by design. There's a right-click blocker on the images so you can't download them (although there's a way to do it if you can be bothered to go through a minor hassle), and they're designed to be small enough so they're of no use to anybody away from the OS.

Some real Redknapp-esque attempts at rewriting history there by Poch, the snivelling *****. "Lallana who wasn't playing" - that'll be the injury he sustained 40 minutes into a game against Reading 5 weeks prior to your arrival "Shaw who wasn't playing" - except for starting ALL of the THIRTEEN games prior to your arrival "When we came here we had to recreate everything from zero" - with a squad that cost £200m. Bravo.