Canal+ has been present in Poland for 25 years and remains a hugely important player in the country’s TV industry.
Aside from eight proprietary channels, all in HD, its portfolio includes nc+, a DTH platform offering over 170 TV channels, super-fast LTE internet access and mobile telephony.
Sport has always been at the heart of Canal+’s business in Poland and this week we saw nc+, working in partnership with the country’s premier football league Ekstaklasa, launch a tender for the audiovisual bookmakers’ rights to the league for the next two seasons. The commercialisation of the rights, which is a first for the Polish market, underlines Ekstraklasa’s strategy of now starting to also sell smaller packages in order to raise more funds for Polish football.
Just three months ago, Ekstraklasa signed a two-year agreement with Canal+ and the public broadcaster TVP which involved what was described as an “innovative construction of media packages”. This will see all 296 games per season carried on nc+ and 37 per season FTA on TVP.
The significance of the agreement was that its value made Ekstraklasa the eighth most lucrative football league in Europe in terms of media rights.
Towards the end of last year nc+ also extended its agreement with the Premier League until 2022. More comprehensive than the current one, it will include the screening of games, some in 4K, on the Canal+ sports channels, as well as on nc+ Go and player+.
However, Canal+’s recent activities are not confined to securing sports rights. Just this week, for instance, we learned that Vivendi has confirmed Poland will be one of the countries in which it will launch its on demand service myCanal. It remains to be seen if it will replace nc+ Go, and indeed how it will be offered to customers.
What is clear, though, is that Canal+ will continue to be a key player in Poland’s increasingly competitive TV industry for a long time to come.