The price for domestic live broadcasting rights of UK Premier League football — an important part of quadplay packages — reached new peaks.

The league closed the sale for seven packages of rights covering the three seasons from 2016/17 to 2018/19 for a record-breaking £5.14 billion.

Sky secured five of the packages on offer for £4.17 billion, while the remaining two went to rival BT for £960 million, well above analysts’ forecasts. The current deal is worth just over £3 billion.

“This is not about sports packages, this is about where you buy your television, telephony and broadband. The market we are in is a very bundled market. The offers and the way people are competing for everyone’s digital home is very competitive,” said Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore at a press conference covered by Channel 4 News.

BT of course is in the process of buying leading UK mobile operator EE, an event that has precipitated a wave of quadplay activity. This has included Sky striking a wholesale deal with O2 for access to its mobile network.

Desirable content has a key role in selling individual quadplay packages. And the UK’s Premier League football definitely falls into the category of highly watchable programming, both in the UK and internationally.

The Premier League is set to unveil the winners for international rights shortly.

Just in the UK, Vodafone has pushed Premier League coverage as a key attraction in its 4G plans.  In contrast, EE’s strategy to date has been to major on its superior coverage and network speed.