Paramount Wins Surprise Bid for UEFA Champions League Rights
(Bloomberg) — Paramount Skydance Corp. won the bid for television rights to the Champions League in England and Germany, according to a person familiar with the matter; This marks the first time the US media group has made a major international sports push.
Rights auctions in other countries, including Europe’s leading markets, are still ongoing.
UEFA had been trying to overhaul the broadcast tender process for the Champions League competition, hoping to increase interest from broadcast providers.
UEFA initially planned to sell global rights packages and was in initial talks with several broadcasters on a global bid, but bidders preferred to focus on regional deals, said a person who spoke on condition of anonymity about ongoing negotiations.
Paramount’s win means a major new entry into England and Germany, which are among UEFA’s biggest regions. The rights currently belong to Amazon.com Inc. with Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and TNT Sports, a joint venture of BT Group.
Paramount, which merged with David Ellison’s Skydance Media in August, had signed a six-year broadcast partnership with UEFA for the US rights of the Champions League in 2022.
The agreement signed on Thursday marks a significant win for UEFA and its new media consultants. For the first time, Relevent Football Partners, a subsidiary of US-based Relevent Sports, and UC3, the commercial arm of UEFA and European Football Clubs, are providing consultancy services to the football authority.
UEFA’s premier annual tournament, the Champions League, generates billions of euros in commercial revenue each season. Despite this huge revenue, media rights remain scattered, with around 100 different publishers receiving various packages.
In an effort to encourage more market competition, the governing body has reorganized the bidding process to specifically appeal to streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and DAZN, Bloomberg previously reported. Despite this initial revision, Relevent eventually decided to return to offering regional packages once the tender process began, the person said.
The person said UEFA is still aiming to offer longer four-year contracts as broadcast giants continue to expand their sports programmes. UEFA changed its rules more than two decades ago, partly due to pressure from the European Commission to reduce typical deals to three years in a bid to increase competition.
Streaming giants are increasingly adding major sporting events to their offerings, but so far they’ve largely focused on flagship games rather than seasonal packages. Netflix recently agreed to stream Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, a one-time event, and will show the National Football League’s Christmas Game Day this year.
Broadcast rights for UEFA’s men’s club competitions (Champions League, Europa League and Conference League) are held by various broadcasters and traditional broadcasters in major European markets. The Champions League recently adopted a new and expanded league format. This change, which increased the number of games per team, led to an 18% increase in broadcast revenues in the top six markets, according to a report by Enders Analysis.
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