The English Premier League looks to have done very nicely for itself out of the latest round of renewals of its international broadcasting rights. We understand that that the EPL has doubled the value of its contracts for 2010-2013 to 1.4 billion pounds ($2.1 billion) with negotiations for just two countries, Albania and Russia, left to be completed. The EPL's current international broadcast rights, for 2007-2010, sold for 625 million pounds.

The latest figures were first reported by Sporting Intelligence, which says that it was intense bidding "between pay-TV rivals in Asia that sent prices soaring". Singapore is a case in point. SingTel bid 200 million pounds to oust StarHub, which had paid 67 million pounds for the city-state's rights in the 2007-2010 contract round, Sporting Intelligence says. In Hong Kong, it says, i-Cable paid 146 million pounds to replace PCCW’s Now TV, which stumped up 115 million pounds last time.

In the Middle East, Abu Dhabi Media Company, owned by relatives of EPL club Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is said to have topped Showtime Arabia with a bid of 200 million pounds, two and a half times the amount  the incumbent paid last time.

The EPL has long-standing relationships with News Corp.'s Fox in the Americas and Sky in Europe, and with The Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN in Asia, both of which have renewed current deals, worth hundreds of millions of dollars each on a regional basis.