Sky Sports acquires rights for Barclays FA Women's Super League

Broadcaster lands ground-breaking Barclays FA Women's Superleague three-year rights deal starting from 2021

Sky Sports to show at least 35 live matches per season

Barclays FA Women's Superleague strengthens Sky's portfolio of both football and women's sport

Sky Sports is excited to announce a ground-breaking, three-year deal with the FA to become the primary broadcaster of the Barclays Women's Super League (BFAWSL) from September 2021.

As one of the most competitive leagues, with some of the most famous names and teams in the world, BFAWSL will be one of Sky Sports flagship offerings.

The deal will see Sky Sports show at least 35 games exclusively live per season and further strengthens the broadcasters position as the market leader in football and women's sport.

In addition to live BFAWSL matches, customers can watch coverage from the Premier League, English Football League, the Scottish Premiership and UEFA qualifiers as well as wide range of women's sports.

The acquisition is the first commercial broadcast deal of its kind for the FA-owned league, considered to be the best women's league in Europe and, arguably, the world.

Sky Sports will now begin a recruitment process for the best in class on and off-screen production team as part of the plan to align BFAWSL with the broadcaster's other big sporting leagues and events.

The BFAWSL will get the full Sky Sports treatment with lengthy build-ups and reaction to all live matches, plus daily news from the competition across Sky Sports News and Sky Sports digital platforms.

Rob Webster Managing Director, Sky Sports said: We are delighted to add the Barclays FA Women's Super League to our expanding football portfolio. Our goal is to bring our customers more of what they love, and we are certain the WSL will be a success with our football-hungry viewers.

We look forward to working with The FA and building a close partnership that helps grow the womens game now and for future generations. With the addition of the Barclays FA Women's Super League, Sky Sports truly is the home of football.

Kathryn Swarbrick - FA Director of Commercial and Marketing said: We are absolutely thrilled to have secured this game-changing partnership that will ensure the Barclays FA Women's Super League becomes more visible than ever before.

This is a multi-million pound commitment from Sky that is going to help push the women's game on even further and support our ambition of having the best professional women's sports league in the world.

Sky's vision for women's football is very much aligned with our own, and that was made clear during the tender process where they outlined some very exciting plans for showcasing the Barclays Women's Super League. We are really looking forward to working with them.

Just some of the headline events on Sky Sports in 2021 include the inaugural edition of The Hundred, The Lions Tour, the Ryder Cup and every race exclusively live from the 2021 F1 season.

Earlier this year, Sky Sports announced that all its live host broadcast events in 2021 will be albert certified sustainable productions, including every match of the BFAWSL season show live on Sky Sports.

Sky Sports and NOW will show at least 35 BFAWSL matches, the BBC have 22 matches and the remaining matches will be available on the FA Player.

About Sky

Sky is Europe's leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Across six countries, we connect our 24 million customers to the best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own award-winning original content.

Our technology, including the market leading Sky Q, connects people to everything they love - with entertainment from Sky TV, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer, and apps like Spotify, YouTube, BBC Sounds, Highbrow, Fiit, and more, in one place, easy. Our streaming service, NOW TV, brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service.

Building on the success of Sky Originals like Chernobyl, Bulletproof and Brassic, we are doubling our investment in original content by 2024 through Sky Studios. Sky News provides impartial and trustworthy journalism for free, while Sky Arts, the UK's only dedicated free-to-air arts channel, makes the arts accessible for everyone. Our new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, which will open in 2022, is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in the UK over the first five years.

We believe that we can be a force for good in the communities in which we operate. We're committed to being Europe's first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030 and we're proud to be a Principal Partner and Media Partner of COP26. We take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion: we've been recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our commitment to diversity and we've set ambitious 2025 targets to continue to increase diversity and representation. We're also committed to investing £30million across our markets over three years to improve our approach to diversity and inclusion, and to tackle racial injustice.

About NOW

NOW is the home of brilliant entertainment. We're one of the UK's leading streaming platforms with critically acclaimed shows, new and exclusive movies, unmissable sport and epic kids TV - all with no contract. Join in with an Entertainment, Cinema, Sports, Kids or hayu Membership to stream instantly across TV, mobile, desktop and over 60 other devices. Watch on the go and even offline with our app by downloading shows and movies.

Entertainment Members can enjoy critically acclaimed dramas, documentaries and comedies, Emmy award-winning shows, the best of HBO and exclusive Sky Originals

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