The Vietcontent agency has acquired broadcast rights to Uefa club competitions in Vietnam from 2024-25 to 2026-27, SportBusiness understands.
The deal was agreed by Team Marketing, Uefa’s exclusive global sales agent for its men’s club competition rights (excluding the US).
FPT currently holds Uefa club competition rights in Vietnam, in a deal from 2021-22 to 2023-24. The Vietnamese telco took over the rights from pay-television broadcaster K+.
It is understood that Vietcontent has secured all club competition rights in the new cycle, and is currently locked in negotiations with broadcasters.
Sources suggested to SportBusiness that Vietnamese telco Viettel is at present the front-runner to sublicense the bulk of Champions League rights. Viettel will show this summer’s Uefa European Championship.
Vietcontent, which was among the bidders during the last Uefa club competitions rights auction, managed the media and sponsorship rights sales to the 2021 Southeast Asian Games held in Hanoi, Vietnam (and delayed to 2022).
In November, broadcasters in Vietnam were handed a deadline of December 4 to lodge first-round bids for rights to Uefa club competitions from 2024-25 to 2026-27.
Team issued two concurrent invitations to submit offers in the country. One covered rights to the Champions League, new Champions League ‘opening tournament’ and the Uefa Youth League, and the other for rights to the Europa League, Conference League and new Europa Super Cup.
The Vietnam deal is likely to be followed shortly by other agreements in Asia.
Last month, Team went to market simultaneously with Uefa club competition rights in 13 different Asian countries and territories. The nine markets comprise: Hong Kong; Indonesia and East Timor; Korea; Macau; Malaysia and Brunei; the Philippines; Singapore; Taiwan; and Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
The first-round bid deadline in all markets was 10am (CET) on March 18 (today).
Pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports holds rights to the Uefa Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League from 2021-22 to 2023-24 in: Hong Kong; Malaysia and Brunei; Singapore; and Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
Rights to all three competitions are held in Korea by SPOTV while multi-platform broadcaster TAP Digital Media Ventures is the rights-holder in the Philippines and pay-TV broadcaster Elta is the incumbent in Taiwan. Public broadcaster TDM holds the rights currently in Macau.
Indonesian media group Emtek holds rights to the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League. It broadcasts matches on its pay-television channels and free-to-air network SCTV.
Team is entering the final stages of its international sales process for the upcoming cycle.
Since the turn of the year, Team has kicked off the sales processes in Poland and Romania, along with issuing the ISOs for in-flight and in-ship rights. However, Team is yet to issue a tender in the Middle East and North Africa.
Following a global tender process, Team retained its mandate to sell global broadcast and sponsorship rights to the Uefa club competitions with the exception of US broadcast rights sales. These are now handled by Relevent Sports Group, which broke Team’s 30-year, exclusive grip on the global commercial rights.