Pay-television broadcaster beIN Media Group has retained exclusive broadcast rights to Uefa club competitions in the Middle East and North Africa in a key renewal announced this morning.
The new agreement in beIN’s home market runs from 2021-22 to 2023-24 and includes the Uefa Champions League, Europa League and new third-tier Europa Conference League, along with centralised rights to the Uefa Women’s Champions League from next season onwards.
Rights have been secured in Arabic, English and French across all 24 countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, where there was interest from the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund.
The deal is understood to be worth in the region of $200m (€164.4m) per year, reflective of a drop believed to be in the region of 25 per cent compared to beIN’s 2018-21 agreement (and including the additional inventory of the Women’s Champions League).
A rights sales process was launched in the middle of May. The Team Marketing agency, working on behalf of Uefa, issued concurrent invitations to submit offers (ISOs) for the Champions League (plus the Uefa Super Cup and Uefa Youth League), and the Europa League and Europa Conference League, with rights to the second-tier and new third-tier competition packaged together as standard.
Interested broadcasters were given just 13 days to turn round their rights proposals, with a deadline of 10am (CET) on May 26 set for the receipt of first-round bids.
In looking to acquire the pan-regional rights, the PIF-backed Saudi bid was faced with the prospect of the on-sale or broadcast distribution of rights in individual territories ahead of a tournament that begins in two months’ time.
Uefa, which stated in its tender document that it did not have to accept the highest bid, would also have faced questions about its appetite to tackle piracy if a Saudi-led bid had been successful. The Switzerland-based governing body last year made a specific submission to the US government regarding the retention of Saudi Arabia on the priority watchlist and is understood to have done so again ahead of the publication of this year’s list.
Severely affected in recent years by the activities of beoutQ, the pirate service with links to Saudi Arabia, beIN has reassessed its rights spending accordingly.
Commenting on the new agreement with beIN, Uefa marketing director Guy-Laurent Epstein said: “This is another major rights deal for Uefa securing significant funds for the European football pyramid. We are delighted to extend our trusted partnership with beIN Media Group, whose sports network in Mena is second-to-none in its quality of programming and broadcasting innovation. We are also delighted for the Uefa Women’s Champions League to have such an important platform of exposure.”
Richard Verow, chief sports officer at the Doha-based broadcaster, added: “beIN is delighted to renew our valued relationship with Uefa as their clubs competitions broadcast partner across all 24 countries of Mena, which complements our existing rights to Uefa’s national team competitions and a huge range of other premium sports and entertainment rights.”
The rights-holding broadcaster and Uefa said that the new agreement “further extends a long-standing and trusted 12-year partnership”.
The launch of the Mena rights sales process came with Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, the beIN chairman, enjoying greater influence among European stakeholders than ever before. In the wake of the European Super League debacle, he was named chairman of the European Clubs Association. The exclusion of his Paris Saint-Germain side from the breakaway plans has curried great favour with Uefa president Aleksander Čeferin.
During the last rights auction held in the middle of 2017, beIN substantially increased its spend in the Mena region to secure the rights (from 2018-19 to 2020-21). At the time, there was the apparent threat of a new competitor in the shape of a Saudi-backed sports broadcast operation looking to roll out across the region. However, in the event, the rival bid to beIN came in the form of a joint proposal from Abu Dhabi Media – owner of pay-television broadcaster Abu Dhabi Sports – and pay-television broadcaster OSN.
The live Champions League rights from 2021-24 were not split up into different packages, as previously reported by SportBusiness. Rights to all 138 live matches per season, including the Uefa Super Cup and Champions League final, were included in a single package. Similarly, live rights to all 282 matches per season from the Europa League and Europa Conference League are being sold together.
A bank guarantee (or commitment to pay the entire rights fee up front) – a standard part of the Uefa club competitions rights sales process – was also requested. The standard IP enforcement criteria were also included in the Mena rights tender.
Various entities are thought to have approached Team with proposals in recent months but the sales process was pushed back until May.
Despite opting against a renewal of its Bundesliga rights in the Mena region and deciding against a bid in the Serie A rights auction in the region, beIN did retain its Premier League rights at the end of last year in a deal that also spanned the whole region.
The new deal in beIN’s home market runs from 2022-23 to 2024-25 and is worth a total of $500m, or $167m per season. Like most sports bodies (and their appointed agencies), the Premier League continued with its sale of rights across all 24 territories in the region in order to create value by bundling all the markets together.