The Czech public broadcaster Ceska Televize (CT) has sold part of its broadcast rights for the upcoming World Cup in Qatar to TV Nova.
In a statement, it says that the move is linked to necessary cost-saving measures brought about by a decrease in the real value of the receiver licence fee.
It will result in CT broadcasting 32 matches from the competition exclusively and 14 jointly with TV Nova, one of the country’s leading commercial broadcasters.
CT announced cuts of almost CZK1 billion (€40.65 million) in May, with one of the areas being affected by austerity measures in the next two years being sports broadcasts.
Petr Dvorak, CEO of CT, said: CT sport has long been an exceptional public broadcaster in the context of Europe. The range of our broadcast rights and the range of programme production was extremely rich. However, broadcast rights prices have increased enormously in the last decade and continue to rise. Especially in the foreign market, where this development is now being accelerated by inflationary influences.
“Therefore, we have no choice but to partially limit the financially demanding production of transmissions and the ownership of rights itself. In the case of the Qatar Championship, the conditions allowed us to offer part of the rights in the form of a sublicence. We have now finally agreed on a joint broadcast with the Nova group”.
Jiri Ponikelsky, executive director of CT sport, added: “I regret that we cannot offer our viewers the football championship in its complete form, as we originally planned and as they were always used to on Czech television. It is undoubtedly one of the top sporting events, which we and the fans have been looking forward to for a long time. However, the price of the rights is so high that their partial sale is a necessary step in the situation we are in at the moment. Even so, I believe that the viewers will enjoy the football programme to the fullest and will not miss anything important with us”.
