BT keeps Champions League rights in £1.2bn deal
Broadcaster fends off Sky and ITV for rights Three-season deal with Uefa runs until 2024
BT Sport has retained the rights to screen the Champions League, after fending off improved offers from ITV and Sky for another three seasons from 2021.
The broadcaster is set to announce it will continue to show every game live and air highlights, with sources claiming it had met Uefa’s asking price for a second successive cycle.
A new deal, first disclosed on the AP newswire and subsequently confirmed by The Daily Telegraph, is expected to be in the region of £1.2billion, matching the figure it paid for its 2018-21 rights.
The offer will have delighted European football’s governing body, as experts had predicted a potential drop-off after the Premier League last year saw a decline in money raised from the sale of rights to show matches in the UK.
In total BT and Sky had bid £4.4 billion to screen the lion’s share of 200 games domestically each season between 2019-22. That amount fell short of the £5.1billion the Premier League netted in 2015.
However, the Champions League has lost none of its lustre for domestic broadcasters, especially after last season’s all-english final. Both Sky, which was bought last year by
American telecommunications giant Comcast, and ITV were understood to have tabled bids for what remains one of the most prized products in sports broadcasting.
Viewing figures have been growing steadily for BT Sport, a subscription broadcaster fronted by Gary Lineker, who also anchors BBC’S Match of the Day.
For last summer’s all-english Champions League final, between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, BT Sport attracted bumper audiences by making it free-to-air. Combined digital and TV figures of 11.3million were estimated by the broadcaster for the match, won 2-0 by Liverpool at Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium on June 1.
Uefa last week struck a deal in the United States with CBS and Univision, who will pay a combined $140million (£109million) a season for Champions League rights from 2021 in a three-year deal. That is up from the £78 million paid in the current Turner/univision deal.
The BT Sport deal helps to protect the huge riches available to Europe’s elite clubs. An estimated £2.29billion in prize money is split between the clubs competing in the Champions League and Europa League in 2019-20.
With the figure derived from expected competition revenue of £3billion, Uefa said that £1.83billion will be distributed as prize money to Champions League teams, with £478million split between those in the Europa League.
The bumper deal will also ensure the spending power of England’s elite clubs continues to grow. Despite a domestic fall, booming overseas demand for Premier League television coverage has boosted the coffers of the top-tier clubs by £1.1 billion.
Broadcast rights for the league have risen by almost eight per cent to £9.2 billion for the next three seasons, despite a drop in the value domestically.
Foreign broadcasters are paying about 30 per cent more for deals to show all 380 games live each season for £4.2billion in the 2019-22 cycle, up from £3.1 billion.
The deadline for offers for the British deal was set at Monday morning. ITV was understood to have submitted several non-exclusive rights packages to bring the tournament back to free-to-air. Streaming service DAZN was also reportedly thought to be keen to show games.
BT chief executive Philip Jansen was said to have previously told investors that BT would be “very disciplined” in how it approached the new tender.