15 football stories that defined 2015

15 football stories that defined 2015 [PART THREE]

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To welcome in the New Year, we count down the 15 biggest stories of 2015 in what was a big year for football. We conclude with the year’s five most significant stories.

5 – Fox Sports lose Premier League broadcasting rights

And they did so with barely a whimper.

Optus gained exclusive coverage of the world’s best football league in a deal worth more than $50 million that bettered Fox Sports and beIN Sports.

How the content can be viewed on the new platform is still somewhat unclear, likely to be decided at a later date. Optus will begin broadcasting the Premier League from the 2016-17 season for an additional two seasons beyond that.

The deal is likely to have a significant negative impact on Australian football and the A-League in particular. Many football fans subscribe to Foxtel simply because of the Premier League.

READ MORE: The best Facebook reactions to Foxtel’s loss of the EPL broadcast rights

With those subscriptions gone, it is likely to have a detrimental flow-on effect on the A-League, with a major portion of those subscribers likely to have little access to the Australian league with just one match on free to air TV.

Just how bad that effect might be remains to be seen, but it is difficult to forecast anything other than negatives.

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