The broadcaster is in talks with BT over a deal which would see some of the biggest matches of the season shown on free-to-air TV.
BT recently spent £738 million on rights to 38 matches per season, a deal which begins next year, but the Daily Telegraph reports that it is willing to let ITV share the rights to some of those matches in order to, "showcase a sample of the content it offers... and also to recoup a portion of its outlay on the high profile matches."
ITV is already one of the front-runners to handle the production of the matches for BT, since it has its own large-scale facilities and already performs a similar service for other broadcasters overseas. With that production contract worth £100m over three years, it seems possible that BT is looking to cut some sort of deal with ITV.
BT's decision to buy Premier League football rights came as a surprise to many, but it has since emerged that the company had tried to buy all seven available broadcasting package deals in an attempt to take BSkyB on head-to-head.
Competition rules mean that they could never have frozen Sky out entirely, but, "They seriously intended to get two thirds of the matches which would have been devastating to BSkyB," a source told the Telegraph.
BSkyB paid £2.28 billion for the rights to 116 matches a season over three years from 2013, a shockingly high figure that led to £500 million being wiped off its share price by investors convinced that the satellite broadcaster had overpaid disastrously.
BT and ITV both consider themselves competitors to Sky, with ITV fighting for advertisers and BT trying to stop leaking customers who sign up for Sky's combined phone, broadband and TV deals.
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