PROOF positive of the Premier League’s truly global appeal arrived this week with the news that overseas television rights are on the verge of being sold for a stratospheric £1.4 billion.

The figure more than doubles the previous deal, agreed in 2007, and is likely to mean at least an extra £13m for every top-flight club for the next three years.

There will be no more perfect example of the voracious appetite for Premier League football abroad than in South Korea this weekend, when the eyes of a nation will be fixed firmly —if a little blearily — on the Reebok Stadium as Wanderers welcome Manchester United.

The 5.30pm kick-off time means the legion of Chung-Yong Lee or Ji-Sung Park fans will have to stay up into the small hours of Sunday morning to get a glimpse of their national heroes.

But that won’t deter an expected pay-per-view audience of between 600,000 and one million people tuning in to cable channel SBS Sports to view the game live, and millions more catching up with events the next day.

The match has been front page news in Seoul for about a week now, as the first confrontation between two of the country’s most adored sportsmen draws ever near.

Korean journalist Jung Kil Cho reckons the game is being billed as ‘master versus pupil’ back home.

He said: “It’s the biggest match of the season in Korea, and will have viewing figures far higher than other games, like the North West derby.

“Ji-Sung Park is the captain of the South Korean national team and playing really well at the moment. Chung-Yong Lee is the biggest talent we have got, and people think he will be the ‘post Ji-Sung Park’.

“People are really excited about this match, and having two of the biggest Korean stars facing each other on the same pitch.”

Since Chung-Yong’s arrival at the Reebok, interest in Wanderers from east Asia has sky-rocketed.

Hits on the club’s official website from Korea now eclipse any other country outside the UK, and significant moves are being made to maximise the commercial benefits, most notably in sponsorship and merchandising.

Wanderers got a brief taste of success in the Far East when Japan legend Hidetoshi Nakata arrived on loan from Fiorentina in 2006, but the permanent signing of Chung-Yong and his unmitigated success on the pitch since his arrival mean their chances of tapping into the lucrative Asian market looks more promising now than at any other time.

Thanks to the new television deal, however, any Premier League club is likely to derive significant financial benefit over the next few years without lifting a finger.

It is predicted that money made from overseas television rights will match domestic income in the future. In short, the gravy train won’t slow down any time soon with so many people eager to tune in world-wide.

Saturday’s game could be beamed into 200 million homes worldwide, and while exact viewing figures tend to border on the hyperbolic, it could be optimistically assumed that half a billion people could eventually see the game in one way or another.

Last April’s game between Manchester United and Arsenal is rumoured to have been watched in some guise by 1 billion people – or roughly one in six of the planet’s population.

It comfortably makes the Premier League brand the most successful sporting export on the planet, and highlights just how important it will be for Owen Coyle’s side to make it across the finishing line to get their slice of the action.

In nine years, and three rounds of negotiation, the money coming into the game from foreign television rights has leapt up dramatically.

In 2001, the Premier League made £1billion from the sale of domestic television rights and £178million from overseas rights.

Those figures swelled for the current deal, which runs out later this year, to £1.7bn for domestic rights and £625m for overseas, and the latter figure is expected to double when the new agreement is signed.