Premier League to launch its own streaming platform in Singapore next season

LONDON (AP) — The Premier League is launching a Netflix-style direct-to-customer streaming platform from next season, chief executive Richard Masters said Thursday.

Premier League Plus will be launched initially in Singapore and, if successful, could be “replicated all around the world.”

“It’s a very long, considered process, carefully chosen,” Masters said at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London. “For the first time the Premier League is going to have its own customers. It’s going to have to deal with promotion, pricing, churn, distribution, all of those things, we’re looking to build a business.

“We’re also looking to learn, to see how that might be replicated all around the world."

The new platform could eventually transform the way fans consume the most popular league in the world, which says it has a global audience of 1.87 billion people and is watched in 189 countries.

It had long-been rumored that the league would launch a “Premflix” platform. It has previously always sold its rights to independent broadcasters such as Sky Sports in England and NBC in the United States.

It is also opening a new Premier League Studios production hub in London.

“What we do with Premier League Plus in Singapore is really about learning as well as building the business," Masters said. "If it goes well, it may be replicated. You don’t want to predict further than that I think at this stage.”

James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Manchester City's goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, center, celebrates with Nico O'Reilly, left, and Erling Haaland after the English Premier League soccer match between Manchetser City and Newcastle in Manchester, England, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (Martin Rickett/PA via AP)

Liverpool's Alexis Mac Allister celebrates scoring during the English Premier League soccer match between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool in Nottingham, England, Sunday Feb. 22, 2026. (Nick Potts/PA via AP)

Arsenal players celebrate winning the English Premier League soccer match between Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal in London, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026.(AP Photo/Ian Walton)

FILE - The match ball is set on a pedestal with the logo of the English Premier League before the soccer match between Newcastle and Aston Villa, in Newcastle, England, on Aug. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Steve Luciano, File)

Manchester United's Benjamin Sesko celebrates after scoring during the Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Everton in Liverpool, England, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Hodgson)

NEW YORK (AP) — Sandra Cisneros, one of this year's inductees into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, admits she's been wanting to join for a long time.

“I felt like I was waiting for someone to ask me to dance. I felt like a literary wallflower, because I never got invited,” says Cisneros, whose books include such favorites as “The House on Mango Street” and “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.”

“There are some clubs I don't care to be a part of, but this one I wanted to be in,” she added, noting that such friends as the poet Joy Harjo were already in.

Cisneros is among 11 new core members voted in this year, the academy announced Thursday. Others include travel writer Pico Iyer, poets Marie Howe and Carl Phillips, fiction writer Rick Moody and the current U.S. poet laureate, Arthur Sze, who joins such predecessors as Harjo, Billy Collins and Tracy K. Smith.

Abstract painter Joan Snyder is among the visual artists who will be inducted this spring, along with painter-printmaker Elizabeth Peyton, architect-educator Mónica Ponce de León, artist-filmmaker Alfredo Jaar and photographer Stephen Shore.

“Whether through the built environment, the lens of a camera, the stroke of a brush, or lines of a poetry or prose, these new members have raised attention to an art form,” Academy President Kwame Anthony Appiah said in a statement. “They show what it means to look closely at history, at power, at intimacy, at place. Their work enlarges the cultural record, and we are proud to count them among us.”

The academy also added three artists to its honorary membership, which includes Meryl Streep and Bob Dylan among other U.S. and foreign artists: Russian author-critic Maria Stepanova and Argentine fiction writer Luisa Valenzuela, both prominent critics of their governments, and the painter Marlene Dumas, a native of South Africa who now lives in the Netherlands.

New members will be inducted during a May ceremony at the academy's beaux arts complex in Upper Manhattan. Author Zadie Smith will deliver the keynote speech — the Blashfield Address.

An honor society founded in 1898, the academy is divided into categories for literature, music, art and architecture. It has a core membership of 300, with new members elected by current members to replace vacancies created after one has died (There were no vacancies in music over the past year). Others in the academy range from authors Robert Caro and Louise Erdrich to musicians John Adams and Wynton Marsalis to artists Jasper Johns and Maya Lin.

An academy spokesperson declined to say who nominated Cisneros, citing the organization's policy of confidentiality.

During her interview, Cisneros referred to the recent death of Oscar winner Robert Duvall. She remembered meeting him in the 1990s at an event at the University of North Texas that included tango dancing, a longtime passion of Duvall's. At one point, he invited her to dance. She declined.

“I was too flummoxed to accept,” she says. “People ask me if I regret not agreeing to dance with Duvall. I didn't dance with him, but I don't have any regrets. I was just happy to be asked.”

FILE - Arthur Sze attends the 70th National Book Awards ceremony on Nov. 20, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Honoree Sandra Cisneros appears at the Authors Guild Foundation Dinner in New York on April 7, 2025. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Sandra Cisneros attends the Authors Guild Foundation Dinner at Gotham Hall on Monday, April 7, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)