The sale of media rights to Uefa club competitions in Cyprus from 2024-25 to 2026-27 is next up for the Team Marketing agency after invitations to submit offers were issued in the island country.
Rights to the Uefa Champions League are being sold together with a new Champions League ‘opening tournament’ and the Uefa Youth League. Rights to the Europa League, Europa Conference League and new ‘Uefa Europa Super Cup’ are being sold together.
The first-round bid deadline in the two concurrent auctions will fall at 10am (CET) on October 18.
Telecoms operator Cyta holds the exclusive rights to the Uefa club competitions during the current three-season cycle. The pay-television broadcaster fought off competition from public-service broadcaster CyBC and fellow telco Cablenet during the last rights sales process, which kicked off in February last year.
The tripartite agreement in 2020 between Cyta, Cablenet and PrimeTel to share their sports channels with one another has stifled rights fee growth in Cyprus. The trio of broadcasters have been the dominant buyers of sports rights in the country. The cross-carriage agreements were allowed by the country’s competition authority, the Cyprus Commission for the Protection of Competition (CPC), on the basis that the telcos still compete for rights.
Cyprus currently holds five spots in European competition. This season, they were split as follows: one team in the Champions League third-qualifying round; one side in the Champions League second-qualifying round; one team in the Europa League third qualifying round; and two clubs in the Europa Conference League second qualifying round.
No Cypriot teams qualified for the Champions League groups stages this season, but both AEK Larnaca and Omonia Nicosia have reached the Europa League group stages, while Apollon Limassol are taking part in the Europa Conference League group stages.
Team kicked off its 2024-27 Uefa club competitions international rights sales by going to market on May 31 in France and the UK, two of its blockbuster markets.
In France, Canal Plus completed a clean sweep of pay-television rights, agreeing to pay €480m ($479m) per season over the 2024-27 cycle. Commercial network M6 landed free-to-air rights to the Champions League final for an annual sum of €4m. In the UK, incumbent rights-holder BT is paying around £305m (€347/$348m) per year for its new Uefa club rights agreement. A package of live rights was secured by Amazon to disrupt the telco’s monopoly over the rights, while public broadcaster the BBC secured highlights for the first time.
The award of US broadcast rights to Relevent Sports Group during a global tender process broke Team’s 30-year, exclusive grip on the global commercial rights for Uefa club competitions. At the end of last month, Team went to market in the Balkan countries (excluding Slovenia).