Era Ends For IMG As English Premier League Takes Production In-House

When IMG’s Barney Francis and John Hollywood join Deadline for a virtual interview, they’ve just left a monthly ‘Premier League Huddle’ – a get-together with their teams to celebrate good work and talk about upcoming plans.

Only this one had added significance, being the final meet before IMG-owned Premier League Productions‘ (PLP) 22-year run producing coverage of the English Premier League for broadcast licensees around the world comes to an end later today. “We had a kind of farewell as we part company,” says Francis, IMG’s Chief Business Officer.

Francis said a few words to staff, as did current PLP CEO Nick Morgan. Graham Fry, IMG’s former Managing Director of Worldwide Sports Production, returned for a Q&A about how the partnership had started and evolved.

“It was interesting to hear Graham talk about it and get an insight into how much has moved on, from training cameras on three live games a week and a couple of magazine shows,” says Hollywood. Today, Premier League games broadcast almost every day of the week and volume of shoulder content is incommensurate to the environment in 2004.

Fry set foot back in the PLP building just a day after Arsenal, the hated north London rivals of his beloved Tottenham Hotspur, were confirmed as Premier League champions with just today’s final round of games to go.

“It did dawn on me that it was 22 years since Arsenal won last won the Premier League, and it was 22 years since Premier League Productions started, so perhaps Graham created it in the hope of preventing Arsenal from finding a way to stop them winning the league,” quips Hollywood.

‘The inevitable question’

Both Francis and Hollywood cut jovial figures this week despite the financial hit of losing the EPL production contract. They could simply be putting on brave faces, but if that’s the case the mask doesn’t split at all during our interview. Surely the end of an era-defining production partnership is a disappointing moment?

“The inevitable question,” says Francis, as he begins explaining how the split came about. “We went through a lot of conversations about what a future might look like. We’re ambitious. We never sit still, so had big plans for how we were going to change our methodologies, our operating model, etcetera.

“It just so happened that the Premier League had a similar mindset, which is about improving and driving efficiency at the same time. We had a very fertile conversation, but it was inevitable that at some point they were going to want to own it.”

From the 2026/27 Premier League season, the Premier League will begin producing coverage itself, taking advantage of the ever-growing popularity of a league boasting players such as Erling Haaland, Bakayo Saka and Bruno Fernandes, and globally-followed clubs such as Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United.

IMG, which is part of Ari Emanuel’s TKO Group Holdings following a $3.25B deal that closed last year, and the Premier League will retain a working relationship on distribution and archive, but it will be the league itself creating the pictures for the likes of Sky, Prime Video, TNT Sports, Canal+, DAZN and JioHotstar.

Francis, a former Sky Sports exec who has been at the center of the Premier League’s financial growth and popularity boom for many years, understands the Premier League’s decision, which brings the league even closer to the licensees, just as international revenues edged ahead of domestic. Recent estimates suggest each Premier League season delivers around £2B ($2.7B) overseas, versus about £1.7B in the UK.

For the league, launching Premier League Studios comes with risk such as big capex costs, Francis notes, but he back the size of the operation to succeed. “Only an organization like the Premier League, NFL or NBA could comprehend taking on that risk,” he adds.

The move was ratified after a vote involving the 20 Premier League clubs voted back in October. Premier League CEO Richard Masters said at the time it would allow the competition to have better control of the content and more “optionality” should it decide to launch a long-touted direct-to-consumer service in the future, as trade publication Sportcal reported at the time.

Evolution of sports broadcasting

During PLP’s run, the Premier League’s explosion in popularity has been mirrored by technological advances. Having begun in a physical studio servicing a traditional linear channel, it morphed into a state-of-the-art virtual set in Stockley Park making everything from digital and social content, and more magazine pieces. Editing and craft suites have been replaced by the cloud, while all games are now shot in 4K and as many of 215 are produced each year.

Hollywood says the Covid-19 pandemic was a revelatory moment for IMG, highlighting how its product had gone beyond being simply football matches.

“It was fascinating that the content service kept going throughout that period,” he says. “You got a real insight into the importance of it to the nation and the rest of the globe. The fact that the extent that the police were prepared to wave people through into Stockley Park so they could deliver on the content service was a certificate of the importance of what we do.”

At several points in the interview, Francis refers to a featurette involving the relationship of England star Jack Grealish and Finlay Fisher, an 11-year-old boy. Fisher had written Grealish, a loveable rogue character who’s own sister, like Fisher, has cerebral palsy. They became close friends and the world took notice when Grealish performed his now-famous ‘worm dance’ goal celebration after Fisher asked him to do it.

“The piece PLP created has been seen 50 million times around the world,” says Francis. “It was a wonderful piece of non-live content, and you can see how if you’re a Premier League licensee that it enhances your live games.”

Premier League Studios will have a tough task to replicate the innovation PLP has been responsible for, especially in terms of international licensees. Both Hollywood and Francis point to Turnstile, a content memory bank that provides immediate access to “everything you could ever need” – for example, the iconic footage of Sergio Aguero’s title-winning goal for Manchester City against Queens Park Rangers in 2012. This allows local broadcasters and streamers to build their own packages around national stars plying their trade in the Premier League, and for PLP to ensure new content was available at the start of every new season.

Hollywood says the Premier League product evolved as a “symbiotic relationship” between the two partners, with both sides providing ideas content and production innovation. “It was about how we could keep adding value,” says Francis. Hollywood adds he believes his team pitched more ideas to the Premier League than any other IMG client.

This all builds up a picture of a hard hit to the IMG production business, but Francis and Hollywood insist it was always expected and that the company has been future-proofing for years.

“Barney always wanted this to be the best, most amicable divorce ever and I think it is at that point,” says Hollywood. “It is a chance to reimagine our business, pivot, look at our tech stack and our plan for staff. We’ve got the right technical solutions, and this has coincided with more clients phoning us, sensing IMG might have more bandwidth to go and support other initiatives. Frankly, we’re in rude health.”

Indeed, IMG still has the production contracts for the English Football League, the Saudi Pro League and MLS. The latter presents a gift and a curse: Studies and report show unprecedented levels of fan growth and investment, but the U.S. still values its homegrown sports above all else. For IMG, that presents a business challenge.

“We need to get to the college students who want to work in media, for whom soccer is their number one sport, and then train them to be the next football broadcast operators, because you want people that live and breathe it. We’re lucky in the UK that we have that.”

Hollywood says there are “a couple of very big projects in different sports” that IMG plans to announce shortly, and notes that there is new “technical muscle available” than in the Premier League-dominated past.

Francis reels off an impressive list of work taking place this weekend, including the Belgian Open golf, the EuroLeague Final Four basketball and, of course, the final ten Premier League matches. “We certainly feel like we’re at the forefront in our industry of the changes that are coming around,” he adds.

It would be a tough task for any company to replenish the revenues inevitably dropped from losing such a large contract, but for IMG the immediate focus is the final round of Premier League productions and remembering what was. “They go with our blessing and we part with their blessing,” says Hollywood.

“There’s a lot of work to do to uncouple the two organizations, and there will be there will be tension throughout, but John’s done an unbelievable job of managing that uncoupling,” adds Francis. “What we must make sure is that on the last match-day round that we all hug each other and say goodbye with smiles on our faces, because we should reflect on 22 great years.”