Champions League Streaming Possibilities For UEFA TV
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June saw the release of UEFA.tv, an Over The Top (OTT) streaming service from Europe’s football governing body. Initially conceived to provide fans with an entertainment platform offering original programming based on 60 years of European football archive, it was also designed with a view to becoming the broadcasting home of current UEFA youth, women’s and futsal competitions.
The first major deal saw an alliance with the Deutsche Fußball Liga, providing Bundesliga content on UEFA.tv for markets such as the UK, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain and Turkey as well as the Middle East and Africa. Prior to the service going live, UEFA alluded to a potential for “competition matches to be shown on the portal when no rights-holders exist for particular territories”—this move was further backed up Monday by UEFA general secretary, Theodore Theodoridis.
“For now, we have lots of [broadcast] partners and we are looking forward to continuing those partnerships, we just want to be ready-we just want to have alternative options,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. Theodoridis noted that the OTT service could be used to broadcast Champions League and Europa League fixtures should partners not be found for the four-year cycle, currently up for tender.
During June’s release of the OTT service, UEFA did stipulate it would not compete with television channels, but rather “complement” them. Taking advantage of “archive footage, delayed games and magazine programmes.” Theodoridis said UEFA would “experiment” with the OTT platform in markets outside Europe, where current broadcast deals are worth significantly less-somewhere in the region of $5.5 million to $11 million (€5 million to €10 million) per year.
The move would replicate a number of other high profile leagues, all of which are investigating the possibility of using in-house OTT services. José Carlos Franco, technology director of Spain’s La Liga, told Spanish news agency EFE that they too were expecting a big shift towards OTT after launching LaLigaSportsTV eight months ago. While the Deutsche Fußball Liga has already investigated an international OTT launch for the Bundesliga should international broadcasters offer insufficient terms for its next round of rights sales from season 2020/21 onwards.