Polsat has won the rights to the Polish national team’s qualifiers for Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup, as well as Euro 2016, which will be hosted in France.
In doing so, it has drawn a bitter response from the Polish public broadcaster TVP, which was also hoping to secure the rights.
In a statement, Polsat says that the games will be shown by both Cyfrowy Polsat and Telewizja Polsat, as well as online by ipla and on mobile devices by Plus.
TVP meanwhile says that it was unable to secure the rights, for which Polsat is reported to have paid €35 million, on financial grounds.
Indeed, the €35 million figure is equivalent to half the revenues TVP obtains from receiver licence fees each year.
Moreover, as TVP points out, only 10% of its viewers choose to pay these fees, compared to the between 50% to over 90% that other public broadcasters obtain.
However, TVP also says it has already secured rights to a number of upcoming major sporting events.
In football alone, they include the World Cup in Brazil (2014), Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022).
