Yahoo has struck a deal with the Premier League for the UK online highlights for the next three seasons.

From the start of next season in August Yahoo, which is in final contract negotiations with the Premier League, will run a five-minute highlights package of every match on Yahoo.co.uk. Highlights will be available from midnight on Sunday after weekend matches and at midnight the same day for midweek fixtures. Virgin Media currently have the rights. Before that they were held by BSkyB, and before that by 3 and Vodafone jointly.

"The acquisition of Premier League rights shows how serious Yahoo is about providing the best in video content for our both our users and advertisers," said Rich Riley, the company's European managing director.

Yahoo's deal also includes the right in the UK to syndicate all, or part, of the Premier League highlights content to third parties.

Yahoo in the US has similar deals with big name sports including the NBA basketball, PGA golf, NHL hockey and MLB baseball.

It is understood that Virgin Media did re-bid for the Premier League rights but Yahoo tabled the most lucrative offer.

"I'm amazed Google hasn't done the deal," said Ian Maude, an analyst at Enders. "They have pushed hard for traditional [TV] rights and signed up Channel 4 and Five and the Indian Premier League. They are clearly trying to make YouTube more than skateboarding dogs."

In January Google-owned YouTube struck a deal with the IPL to live stream matches to every country outside the US. In the past six months YouTube has also struck deals with Channel 4 and Channel Five. But then the Premier League is involved in a long-running copyright class action suit against YouTube, which kicked off in May 2007.

"This seems a great coup for Yahoo, although whether the deal works depends on what they paid compared to how they can monetise it," said Maude. "Online sports advertising is pretty significant in the US, albeit tiny compared to TV advertising, and the Premier League is probably the only sport likely to attract a big audience [to make money from]."

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".