Hearts & Hibs to benefit as record number of Scottish Premiership games to be shown in huge broadcast deal

Hibs and Hearts meet in the third Edinburgh derby of the season on Wednesday.

Following on from another exciting Scottish Premiership season, the Scottish Professional Football League has announced a new broadcast deal with Premier Sports, which will see 20 live fixtures shown each season, starting this summer.

The deal will run for five seasons and will permit the allocated matches to be shown across the UK and Ireland. Premier Sports has acquired the rights as part of a competitive bidding process, which involved multiple interested broadcasters.

The group of pay television sports channels, founded in Ireland, holds exclusive rights to La Liga, the Elite Ice Hockey League, NHL and NASCAR. Premier Sports also broadcast the Scottish League Cup and holds shared rights to showing the Scottish Cup, alongside BBC Sport.

The news comes following the League’s 2022 extension with Sky Sports, which will see the broadcast giants show up to 60 live Premiership matches each season. With a maximum of 80 games set to be shown as of the 2024/25 campaign, fans will be able to tune into a record number of live Scottish top flight fixtures ever shown on television.

The Premier Sports deal will bring in a reported ‘additional eight-figure sum’ into Scottish football while the deal runs, which will lead to further cash injections into clubs.

“This is tremendous news for SPFL clubs and supporters alike and means that up to 80 Premiership matches will be broadcast live next season across Sky Sports and Premier Sports. This will be the highest number of live matches ever broadcast from the Scottish Premiership,” said SPFL group chief executive Neil Doncaster.

“With Premier Sports already having the rights to the Premier Sports Cup and Scottish Cup, they have cemented their place as a key broadcaster of live Scottish football. We are extremely grateful to Premier Sports for their increased investment into the game, which will bring an additional eight-figure sum into Scottish football over the next five years, meaning further record-breaking payments to clubs.”

Premier Sports founder Michael O’Rourke reflected on this exciting new deal which adds to the broadcaster’s growing portfolio of Scottish football coverage.

“We are delighted to strengthen our Scottish football offering to fans in what is a hugely exciting time for Scottish football at both club and international level,” he said.

“The addition of the Scottish Premiership means we are showing more Scottish football than ever before and we’re looking forward to broadcasting games and storylines from one of Europe’s most exciting and passionate league for the next five years.”

Hearts and Hibs fans will be seeing more of their clubs on the screens this coming season. Pie & Bovril recently broke down the numbers of each game shown on Sky Sports during the 2023/24 Premiership campaign and out of 41 games shown, Hearts were shown four times and Hibs just twice. Only four games throughout the entire season featured clubs that weren’t either Celtic or Rangers.