Some have speculated that the future of college and professional sports broadcasting will be in the hands of tech giants such as Apple and Google. It seems that Apple is about to take its first major step in that direction with its bid to purchase the exclusive rights to the English Premier League.

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Apple could be set to rush soccer broadcasting into a new era with a revolutionary, multi-billion dollar bid for television rights to the English Premier League.

And it could have implications far beyond soccer.

The technology giant is interested in acquiring exclusive rights to screen EPL games in England when the next package (for the 2013-2016 seasons) is tendered. The Cupertino, Calif., company is set to wade into a bidding war with established television heavyweights such as Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky Sports, ESPN and Al Jazeera.

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Before his death, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs spoke of a potential new product that would take the Apple streaming concept and put it inside an actual television. In one of his final interviews, Jobs claimed to have discovered the solution to formulating a successful marriage between the Internet and television.
"If such a product were to come out it could change the whole playing field,” Hesseldahl says. "No one knows for sure what they are planning, but if you had an actual television set with the ability to web-stream embedded in it, and users were still able to access their traditional cable or satellite functions, it could be huge.

"That is why Apple has to be taken seriously in any market. They have the money and the technological smarts to have a vision of how we will view things in the future. In many ways, they hold all the cards."

That might be a problem for ESPN, which charges cable subscribers whether they watch the network or not. Any reliable way to bypass cable is a potential threat to ESPN's bottom line, if not its incredible reach and popularity.

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