I did some work in the Soccer media in the UK a couple oy years back.
Back then the arrangement was that the early kick-off Saturday games and the Sunday game would be on Sky (eqv to Foxtel but more widespread). Then they added a 2nd earlier Sunday game for PPV. We get those games via Foxtel. Unfortantely we don't get the Martin Tyler and Andy Gray commentary.
A separate company then offers 3 of the Saturday afternoon games to the international audience. They can only be seen in the UK on pirate satellite. So the 3 games this company chooses, and markets mostly to Europe and Asia will always include Man Utd if they are playing.
I don't know who has first choice but I would be fairly sure that Foxtel and SBS have a choice from just 3 games. The annoucement on which games this 3rd company would cover would be early in the week. I would suspect that the 3rd game offered was the Chelsea - Tottenham game. If the Blackburn - Liverpool game was on offer one of the channels would have taken it for the Aussie involvement.
I am little surprised actually that the Chelski - Spurts game is not an early kick-off. It used to only happen for 'big' local derbies when the police insisted on it to cut down on drunken violence. But now they seem to find a way to have one every week.