Football is undoubtedly one of the main drivers for pay-TV in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the weeks and months leading up to the new season, which in some countries has already started, we have seen a number of key agreements signed between operators and football associations, or their representatives.
Just this week, for instance, we learned that Liga TV, which is responsible for media rights for Russia’s premier football league, has approved a three-year agreement with the DTH platform NTV-Plus. Worth some €35.2 million per season, it is on a par financially with previous deals between the two parties but gives the Gazprom Media owned company all media rights, rather than just broadcasting.
Football, of course, is already hugely important in Russia and will become even more so as the country gears up to the next World Cup, which it will be hosting in 2018.
Meanwhile in Poland, we saw Canal+ earlier this summer secure rights to the Polish premier league Ekstraklasa for a further three seasons. Games will continue to be shown by the DTH platform nc+, along with Eurosport, which has sublicensed some of the rights.
They will, in addition, be made available online by Onet-RASP, while outside the country they will be viewable on Dailymotion.
What is interesting to note here is that although a new market entrant named Eleven Sports Network failed to secure the Ekstraklasa rights ahead of the launch of two new channels in Poland, it has been gradually building up a portfolio of rights from other leagues, including Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1.
Elsewhere, three months ago we saw O2 in the Czech Republic, formerly part of Telefónica but now backed by the local PPF Group, secure a three-year deal for the UEFA Champions League, starting this September. It soon afterwards also secured the rights to the Czech premier Liga for three seasons.
O2 is the leading IPTV operator in the Czech Republic and has close to 200,000 subscribers. It plans to launch a new sports channel named O2 Sport next month.
In Romania, we learned at the start of the year that RCS&RDS had secured the rights to the country’s Liga 1 for a further two seasons. They covered not only TV but also online and mobile devices and were sublicensed from a company named Intel Sky Broadcast (ISB).
These agreements are only the tip of the iceberg and indicate the increasing importance of football rights for pay-TV operators throughout the region.
