Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has a seriously difficult task over the next week to sell the remaining TV rights packages for an acceptable price.
The PL say there were 'multiple bidders' for the two sets of 20 games, comprising a bank holiday and three midweek rounds, left unsold when the five other packages went for £4.64billion.
These interested parties are believed to be Sky, BT Sport and Amazon, whose offers up to now have not been considered big enough.
Yet Sky — cock-a-hoop at buying more games in their four packages for £600m less than last time — have presumably already put on the table what they consider one more package is worth to them and have no reason to go higher.