October 22 – Nine European leagues, members of the Association European Leagues Association, have agreed a joint international broadcast deal with ELEVEN and OneFootball that includes both live rights and highlights.
The leagues have bundled their rights in three-year in a deal that is structured to allow other leagues in the 37-member European Leagues group to join at any time.
The first leagues to pool their non-domestic rights are the Danish Superliga, Icelandic Top Football, Professional Football League of Kazakhstan, Latvian Optibet Virsliga, Northern Ireland Premiership, Norwegian Eliteserien, Polish Ekstraklasa, Slovak Fortuna Liga, Swiss Football League.
Previously leagues would generally pass the rights on to a broadcast rights agency for sale internationally, but would seldom receive any meaningful rights fees. Under the new agreement the leagues will receive a fee, though no figure was given for the value.
As well as receiving a “guaranteed fee”, the thinking is that the leagues for the the first time will be able to reach their fans wherever they are, as well as tap in to new groups of supporters via the OneFootball and ELEVEN audience base.
Jacco Swart, Managing Director, European Leagues: “We are uniquely positioned to take advantage of opportunities such as these and we will continue to support the development of our members in relation to league business development. I’m excited about how we can leverage both the ELEVEN and OneFootball platforms to amplify the international reach of our member leagues and their clubs. Our intention is for sure to increase the number of participating leagues over time and to keep on exploring new business areas so as to collaborate with the companies we partner with in the most mutually beneficial way and grow the relationship over the long-term.”
Only founded in 2015, ELEVEN’s platforms across Europe and Asia deliver live premium sport across their linear and digital channels. The digital broadcaster claims 1,655 distribution channels and 665 million aggregated social media followers, generating more than 4 billion video views each month.
Pedro Presa, Chief D2C Officer, ELEVEN Group: “We want to deliver for fans who were previously unable to watch the teams they love play and we want to give all football lovers the chance to discover new leagues and players. This new deal enables us to deliver on that mission in a big way via OTT, linear distribution, and original content.”
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