In the office of the Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, sit 20 miniature buses, each painted in club ­livery and supplied by Hong Kong's Now TV to mark an annual marketing campaign involving the real things. They are lined up as a constant reminder of the importance of its overseas appeal. From Abu Dhabi to Abuja and Boston to Buenos Aires, the 662 million homes throughout the world to which its matches are beamed are increasingly becoming the engine of its economic growth.

Alongside new rules on financial controls, a revised fit-and-proper-persons test and a debate around homegrown ­players, the packed agenda for the ­Premier League's two-day annual general ­meeting beginning today will include a vital update on plans for overseas TV sales for the period from 2010 to 2013. The Premier League's small inhouse team, lead by the head of international broadcasting and media operations, Phil Lines, will start racking up the air-miles by shortly issuing tenders in Asia, before heading on to the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and back to Europe in time for Christmas.

Although Scudamore and his advisers retained the gratitude of club chairmen and the admiration of the sports marketing world by maintaining the value of domestic live rights at £1.8bn, there is a general acceptance that the market has levelled out at home. That view has been further reinforced by the uncertainty over the future of Setanta, the new entrant that fuelled a rise in value. Future growth will come from overseas, where revenues more than doubled to £625m last time around. Recession or not, most are confident that once the overseas sales are totted up, the overall total will beat the current £2.7bn over three years. "It is one of very few products where people are coming to the door. It's virtually recession proof," said one senior sports marketing executive.

That most of the deals are banked in dollars is a substantial advantage, given the beneficial exchange rate. While the 211 territories that the Premier League's 380 matches are beamed to is unlikely to increase substantially, within that geographical spread there are myriad opportunities for growth – and equally as many threats. In ­emerging markets like China and India there is scope to increase ­revenues and improve penetration. And in more developed markets in Asia, ­Premier League football is the ­driving force behind nascent new media opportunities.

Graham Fry, managing director of TWI, a division of IMG that handles production of the matches, met the Premier League's broadcasting partners from around the world last Friday to review this season's coverage. He said: "There's no sign of the appetite diminishing. If anything, it's growing. They want more of everything." He added: "When we started doing this 10 years ago, getting access to the clubs and the players was quite difficult. But now the clubs, the players and the agents are realising that publicity around the world is as important as domestic coverage."

The challenge for the Premier League is marrying the kind of exposure that free-to-air television brings with the larger cheques promised by pay TV ­broadcasters to satisfy clubs demanding ever more cash to satisfy their spiralling wage bills. Some critics believe the emphasis has been overly biased towards bringing in cash today rather than strategically growing the market for tomorrow. That has left the Premier League exposed in places like China where the NBA, with far tighter control over its franchises, was able to steal a march by investing for the future. In China the German Bundesliga, shown on the free-to-air state network CCTV, is far bigger thanks to the Premier League's decision to do a deal with fledgling payTV company WinTV.

There is a recognition that a shift in strategy is required and deals struck this time around in China, India and Africa are all likely to include a free-to-air element. Insiders also believe that a 24/7 Premier League channel is being considered in an effort to provide an endless stream of magazine programming, previews and reviews around the action.

In Africa, a consortium of broadcasters, led by Nigerian pay TV outfit HiTV, is calling on the Premier League to take a more sophisticated approach and accept a bid from a consortium of local broadcasters that will be able to tailor their coverage according to their local market. "It's a drug, it's a battering ram. People have to pay for it," said HiTV chief executive Toyin Subair, who said the high profile of African players in the Premier League had been a significant factor in establishing its pre-eminence over rival European leagues.

"At the moment you are required to bid for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. When you sell a product over 53 countries, you make it very difficult for any one of those countries to exploit the rights." By selling to a consortium, he said, it would help drive the development of entrepreneurial pay TV broadcasters in each of those territories who would be able to share rights and facilities but build their own local programming around it.

For all the rhetoric about the Premier League being the biggest and best in the world, the overseas expansion story has not been one of unalloyed success. In Africa, there was a hiccup earlier this year when GTV, one of two broadcasters that showed matches on the continent, collapsed after over-reaching itself. That highlighted the high-stakes calculations that the Premier League makes every time it signs a deal on whether they are dealing with the next Sky or the next ITV Digital.

The threat of piracy also looms large. In some markets to which the Premier League is selling, the concept of ­copyright has all but broken down and all major sports rights holders live in fear of going the way of the music industry. The ­Premier League will continue to pursue a carrot- and-stick approach, aggressively pursuing sites offering unauthorised live streaming, while hoping the quality of its product will give fans little reason to seek out a more unsatisfactory experience online. There is also a looming legal challenge in Brussels to deal with, which could undermine the profitable principle of selling rights on a territory-by-territory basis.

There are some rights experts who believe the Premier League has been too conservative. That, for all that some fans rail at the Premier League for being money and marketing driven, the likes of Major League Baseball and the NFL are thinking much more carefully and cleverly about how they exploit new media platforms and grow their brand abroad rather than simply taking the money and running.

Of late, the Premier League has attempted to take a more sophisticated approach to its overseas relations. Rather than engaging in an Empire-building dash to paint the globe in its colours, recent months have seen a concerted effort to win hearts and minds. New intitiatives to help grow community programmes and domestic leagues in the areas in which it does business are bearing fruit. The most dramatic turnaround has been in Asia, where AFC president Mohamed bin Hammam, recently re-elected following a bitter battle, went from being openly hostile to the Premier League's expansionist ambitions to one of its biggest fans. He was won round by Scudmore's promises to help provide expertise and investment to help build the domestic game in the region.

There are other clouds on the horizon. As the Glazers at Manchester United and George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Liverpool look for new ways to grow revenues and service interest payments, there is a fear that they will return to the overseas value of their brands as the means to do so. For all the efforts made by United in the past 15 years to build a global brand and all the rhetoric about having, according to one nebulous estimate, 333m "supporters" around the world, the club's latest results show that just £3.34m of its £256.2m annual turnover originated outside the UK. Of that, £101m was generated on matchdays at Old Trafford. So for United meaningfully to monetise its overseas appeal, it would have to gain greater control over its rights.

It tried once before, when Peter Kenyon was chief executive and it argued that it was unfair for the biggest clubs to drive the game's global appeal while splitting the revenues equally, and was voted down 19-1. Attempting to break ranks again was also understood to be considered as an option by the Glazers, before the incumbent executive team reiterated the importance of collective selling to the Premier League's business model.

The challenge for the Premier League and Scudamore is to keep making and re-making that case to the growing legion of overseas owners. While he can point to an impressive body of evidence for why the collective agreement should hold, the fact that overseas revenues make up an increasingly large percentage of the whole is bound to see the issue rise up the agenda again. Because overseas revenues are redistributed equally, rather than weighted according to appearances and final league poistion, each club gets the same amount. In the 2007/08 season, each club received £9.6m.

Scudamore is confident that the collective selling agreement that has proved so vital to the Premier League's growth will hold, because all the clubs understand its power. But as they look for new revenue streams, it is inevitable that the bigger clubs will step up their efforts to bring in more money from overseas, organising their own competitions and signing their own marketing agreements. It was partly to make sure that the profits from such overseas expansion could be equally shared that the inexpertly handled 39th game concept was dreamed up. That has been put on the back burner until at least 2013 following a public backlash, although Scudmore still insists the logic of the market means it will return in some form. In the meantime, expect to see more modest attempts to beef up the current Asia Cup pre-season tournament, perhaps involving all 20 Premier League clubs.