Alibaba-owned platform Youku has become the fourth broadcaster to acquire non-exclusive streaming rights to Uefa club competitions in China for the 2021-22 season.
Youku will show live coverage of matches from the Uefa Champions League and Europa League. Its deal began with coverage of the Uefa Super Cup this week.
PP Sports, Tencent and iQiyi Sports have also acquired similar, non-exclusive rights packages for the 2021-22 season.
The quartet of deals have only mentioned coverage of the 2021-22 season, the first of the new three-season Uefa club rights cycle, which runs until the end of 2023-24.
The non-exclusive, one-season deals mark a sharp change in approach for Uefa and its commercial rights sales agent Team Marketing. Previously, it generally agreed exclusive streaming rights deals with one partner in China covering full, three-season cycles, as it does in all other markets.
Team historically also agreed a linear television rights deal with state broadcaster CCTV each cycle. Last cycle, however, it sold fully exclusive rights to PP Sports.
Profound changes in the Chinese sports streaming landscape in the last year have pushed Uefa and Team towards the series of non-exclusive deals.
The main driver of the changes has been financial difficulties at PP Sports. The platform was previously the dominant sports streaming platform in market, but in the last year has had a series of deals terminated or expire without renewal after it struggled to make rights fee payments. PP Sports had massively overspent on sports rights in the preceding years, causing a bubble in rights values that burst last year amid the pandemic.
PP Sports had fully exclusive, streaming and linear rights in China for Uefa club competitions in the previous cycle, 2018-19 to 2020-21. It sublicensed linear rights to CCTV.
The platform’s standing has been damaged by the events of the last year, so it was something of a surprise to see it acquire Uefa rights for the coming season.
Youku is the third biggest video entertainment streaming platform in China, after iQiyi and Tencent Video. All three are primarily focused on general entertainment video – television series and films. iQiyi and Tencent have significant sports streaming arms, but Youku does not.
Because Youku is owned by one of the world’s biggest tech companies, it has always been considered a potentially powerful player in sport. It has acquired sports content over the years, but it has never been a major focus for the business.
Last season, it sublicensed some football content from PP Sports, including German Bundesliga and Italian Serie A football. In the recent past, it has had rights for properties including the 2018 Winter Olympics and 2018 Fifa World Cup, both sublicensed from state broadcaster CCTV, as well as CBA basketball and the Chinese Football Association Cup.
Alibaba and PP Sports’ owner Suning have had several rounds of talks about merging Youku’s sports arm and PP Sports, but these have never produced a deal.