The Premier League has made Microsoft Azure its official cloud and AI partner in a five-year deal.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will provide English football's top division with cloud computing and AI services to help modernize its digital infrastructure, broadcast match analysis, and organizational operations.

The Premier League is migrating its core technology infrastructure to Microsoft Azure in an effort to improve its scalability and enable faster innovation. The deal is also set to encompass the Premier League's new fan-facing digital platforms.

Microsoft and the Premier League declined to disclose to Bloomberg the financial terms of the deal.

Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, said: “We are delighted to welcome Microsoft as a partner of the Premier League. This partnership will help us engage with fans in new ways — from personalised content to real-time match insights.

"We look forward to working together over the next five years to deliver more innovative experiences to all Premier League supporters around the world.”

“We are pleased to partner with the Premier League to bring innovative and interactive experiences to football fans around the world,” added Judson Althoff, executive vice-president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft. “By leveraging our secure cloud and AI technologies - including Azure AI Foundry Services with Azure OpenAI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Dynamics 365 - we will transform how football is experienced, delivered, and managed on and off the field.”

On the AI side, the league will use Azure OpenAI Azure OpenAI to pull information from over 30 seasons of stats, 300,000 articles and 9,000 videos to give fans easy access to stats about clubs and players, and will use Microsoft Azure AI Foundry services including Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models for real-time data overlays and post-match analysis.

In the US, American football's NFL is a known customer of Microsoft.

Oracle previously provided cloud computing services to the Premier League, though that agreement ended at the end of the season earlier this year. Oracle served the league from cloud regions in four countries - initially out of the United Kingdom, then also out of Singapore, the United States, and Brazil - from where it was stored and syndicated to broadcast partners.

Part of that agreement also saw the Premier League moving 30 years of historical content archive to OCI.