The Dutch football association KNVB has announced details of the tender for the rights to broadcast live rights as well as highlights. All clubs in the premier league, called Eredivisie, have agreed to jointly sell all broadcast rights.
In order to maximise live coverage, three games will be played consecutively rather than simultaneously on Sundays, at 2pm, 4pm and 6pm. As a consequence, the highlights will only be available for broadcast after 8pm on Sundays. Other games will be played on Friday evenings and Saturdays.
At the moment, RTL holds the rights to the weekly highlights on Sunday (which it acquired when buying the TV assets of John de Mol’s Talpa), as well as the live rights to the Friday games. Tele2 Voetbal currently has the remaining live rights, which expire at the end of this season.
Possible bidders to the live rights are Chellomedia (for its Sport1 channels), KPN (which operates the DTT platform Digitenne and an IPTV service) and again Tele2. The live rights are currently sublicensed to all platforms by Tele2.
The Dutch football association said it might consider launching its own channel for the live games and market these through the various platforms.
