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The Scottish Premier League (SPL) have agreed a deal with Sky and Disney owned ESPN for TV coverage of the Scottish Premier League for the next 5 seasons.
The deal is said to be worth £65 million over the five seasons which works out the same as the current deal the SPL had with Setanta at £13 million a season.
Setanta did have an improved deal in place to start from 2010 but the broadcasters were unable to fulfil that contract due to going into Administration recently.
The SPL do have the option of opting out of the final two years written in to this new deal though.
Representatives of the SPL's 12 teams voted at Hampden recently to accept the deal on the table and the campaign to find a new TV media partner for the SPL, that has been ongoing for three weeks since Setanta called in the receivers, has finally been concluded.
SPL chairman Lex Gold said:
"We are pleased that in just over three weeks we have been able to strike this deal.
"Sky and ESPN are two of the biggest names in sports broadcasting and they will bring first-class production standards and a wide audience to the table.
"We are looking forward to working with both in the coming years to raise the profile of the SPL for our clubs, fans and partners."
ESPN only last month won the contract to show the English Premier League (EPL) taking over from the failed Setanta deal and ESPN intend to launch a new Sports channel in the UK via Sky called simply 'ESPN' and it's envisaged that the SPL games will also be screened on that channel.
Brian Hine
GGTTH