DSTV’s SuperSport has agreed to pay £296 million to show live English Premiership matches across Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa for 2016-19 seasons.

The Sports channel paid £205m for 2013-16 seasons to have exclusive rights south of the Sahara. And that was £91 million less than what it is expected to pay next summer.

The increasing costs of showing live English leagues, while it has made the English league lucrative and profitable for players and club owners, may translate into higher subscription costs for football lovers, especially as the currencies of South Africa and Nigeria, two major markets of the South African company have depreciated between 25-35 percent in the last year.

TV rights for Sub-Saharan Africa account for a little less than 10 percent of the estimated earnings for the English league, now put at about a billion pounds per year and £3.2 billion for the next three years.

At £96.5 million a year, DSTV is paying second to NBC network in the United States,which has agreed a deal of £109.6 million. Hong Kong is third with a TV deal of £87.7 million. But surprisingly, mainland China with the highest population in the world has sealed a deal for just £10.7million a year.

Latin America, presumably crazy about football like Africa, is not so crazy about English football than the Spanish La Liga. But a Brazil Ian network is paying £32.8 million yearly for three years.

All the deals are almost sealed to enable the executive chairman of the English league, Richard Scudamore to deliver lucrative New Year tidings to his clubs.

Total TV rights income is expected to be £3.2billion for the foreign rights alone for three years. This sharply contrasts with when the Premier League began in 1992-93. Then the league earned less than £8million a year from selling live rights to every other country in the world combined.

The Premier League have since become such a truly global phenomenon — earning more from foreign sales each year by far than any other league in any sport, anywhere — that by next summer that figure will be almost 150 times larger.

Nearly all the major 2016-19 deals are done: a $1bn six-year package in the USA with NBC; a sensational doubling of rights values in Scandinavia and Hong Kong; bumper deals across the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa; and a huge leap in France.

The last ‘major’ market, India, should be completed in the coming weeks, when a deal worth just under £100m for 2013-16 is expected to jump significantly.

The bottom line? All the foreign deals combined were worth £2.23bn for 2013-16. The MoS calculates that will surge by nearly 50 per cent to about £3.2bn for 2016-19. That means a hike from £7.6m a year in 1992-93 to £1.08bn a year from 2016-19.

* Originally reported by Mail Online.