tennis), UEFA Champions League,
Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s
Bundesliga (all football) and the
NBA. Last year, beIN SPORTS
sublicensed its FIFAWorld Cup
property to national free-to-air
broadcaster TF1 for a reported €30m.
Canal+ has since fought back,
paying €2.16m for two packages of
the national Ligue 1 for the 2016-
2020 seasons. beIN SPORTS bought
the remaining broadcast rights
packages for €186.5m.
In Asia, rights to the Olympic
Games are being bought not by
broadcasters, or by broadcasting
unions (which historically have
acquired rights for their members),
but by advertising and PR firms.
Japan’s Dentsu was awarded the
broadcast rights for the Olympics
from 2018 until 2024 at the end of
July, across 22 countries including
Afghanistan, Brunei, Cambodia,
East Timor, Hong Kong, Indonesia,
Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia,
Myanmar, Papua New Guinea,
Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan,
Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
The deal covers TV, radio and
online. The deal expands on an
agreement that Dentsu entered into
for the 2016 Games when it outbid
the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union
(ABU) by what is believed to be a
significant margin. The Asian rights
deal follows on the European rights
deal that the International Olympic
Committee signed with Discovery
in June 2015. Discovery secured the
rights for the Games between 2018
and 2024 for a reported €1.3billion,
outgunning Europe’s public broad-
casters which have enjoyed the rights
in the past. It’s a relatively cheap
deal, given that last year NBC in
the USA paid US$7.75billion for the
rights from 2022 to 2032.
Discovery – which bought
Eurosport earlier this year – will
have to show the Games on free-to-
air television to comply with the
strict “event listing” legislation that
exists in most European Union
member states. The company is also
expected to sub-lease some of the
rights in many European markets.
INCREASEDCHOICE?
There is the possibility that viewers
will like the deal as it could mean
that more of the 28 Olympic sports
are shown on television, with
Discovery/Eurosport creating
additional channels to ensure that
every discipline has live coverage.
For London 2012, the BBC
broadcast 24 channels during its
“home” Games.
Discovery/Eurosport is likely to
follow that lead, as well as
providing further coverage outside
the duration of the Games
themselves. However, unlike
London 2012, viewers will probably
be charged for additional channels,
whether consumed on broadcast
TV or online platforms.
It is worth noting that the advent
of pay-TV has increased the
volume of sport available on
television – at least in Europe. In
the UK, it is estimated that the four
free-to-air channels produced
around 2,800 hours of sport TV in
1989. By 2012, Sky ran four distinct
sports channels, offering UK
subscribers some 35,000 hours of
coverage. These additional hours
had the benefit of delivering
coverage of less popular sport to
audiences across the UK.
The big
issue for
rights
holders
and
broad-
casters is
Internet
piracy
“
”
MEDIA RIGHTS
|
THE CHANNEL
THE CHANNEL
|
ISSUE 2 2015
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41
t
EXPERT VIEW
TV plays a massively important
part in the way that sport is
broadcast and given the amount
that’s been invested in broadcast
networks and in broadcasters
generally, that isn’t going to
change for quite some time –
says
Julian Moore
. His
background is working for
Infront Sports & Media and
handling media rights for the
2010 and 2014 World Cups for
the Asian market for FIFA. Now a
lawyer at
Pinsent Masons
specialising in sports rights, he
draws on personal experience as
he talks to
The Channel
about
rights holders, sponsors,
platforms – and of course money
involved in the distribution of
rights. In fact all federations farm
out work to agencies. But in the last
few years there’s been an increasing
trend, certainly for the bigger
federations, to keep the agents out
of the picture and to do all the work
themselves. So Champions League
is handled by an agency in
Switzerland, whereas UEFA
handles all their rights in house, but
uses agents here and there on some
of their properties.
What were the big changes you
saw while working in Singapore on
the FIFA project?
Over those eight years, it was the
massive increase in popularity of
football. Some markets in Asia –
like Japan and Korea – have always
been into football. India however,
which historically has had very
little interest in football, now has a
professional league and is paying
serious money for big ticket football
rights. Mongolia and the
Philippines are also good examples
of where football is taking hold. I
think all this was primarily driven
by the success of the Premier
League. Increasingly all the best
players in the world are playing in
that league. It’s an incredible
marketing success – you see it in
places like Mongolia on the street.
As far as changes from a
technology perspective are
concerned, there was increased
growth/competition in the pay-TV
sector in a number of territories
where historically there was no
significant pay-TV market. Whether
or not pay-TV or the new media
increased competition generally
between media companies, it was
driving rights fees up and up in
that part of the world.
Is there an equivalent to Europe’s
protected, listed events?
There is listed events legislation in
India which historically has been
used in relation to cricket but is
now also used for the FIFAWorld
Cup. There’s legislation now in
Singapore. In China there’s an
equivalent mechanism which
means CCTV is the only broad-
Is it standard within the sports
industry to have a separate
company handling rights?
It’s typical for an agency to be
