Ziggo Sport, the Dutch broadcaster, is set to retain its rights to UEFA's men's club soccer competitions in the Netherlands for the next cycle after becoming the governing body's preferred bidder.
The rights cover the next four seasons of the top-tier UEFA Champions League (UCL), second-tier Europa League, and third-tier Conference League, from 2027-28 through 2030-31.
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An exclusive negotiation period between UC3 (a joint venture between UEFA and the European Football Clubs body) and Ziggo was unveiled yesterday.
This announcement comes with a Dutch tender for those UEFA rights, having been issued on January 26, with a deadline for submissions of February 26.
Ziggo currently holds UCL, Europa League, and Conference League rights for the 2024-25 through 2026-27 cycle, via a deal unveiled in late 2022, which at that point was valued at $30.3 million annually.
The group stages of the 2025-26 UCL contained two Dutch sides, PSV Eindhoven and Ajax, both of whom failed to progress to the knockout stages. Multiple top-tier European sides from other nations, meanwhile, also contain well-known Dutch national team players.
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By GlobalDataAnother trio of teams took part in the Europa League group stages.
European soccer's governing body UEFA is handling the rights sales for this next cycle through its partner agency Relevent Sports (which has a dedicated Relevent Football Partners arm for its UEFA dealings).
Rights to these competitions have already been allocated in the 'Big Five' European markets of the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, late last year.
Those covered four seasons (2027-28 to 2030-31) and were the first tender processes to be managed by US agency Relevent, which replaced UEFA’s longstanding sales partner Team Marketing in that position in late 2024.
Globally, UEFA is attempting to secure a 10% increase on the existing value of the rights.
Earlier this week, a similar tender went live across 19 markets in mainland Europe and South/Central America.
Aside from the key quintet of European markets listed above, UEFA and Relevent have also selected one or more preferred bidders in Albania, Kosovo, and Japan, as well as for in-ship and in-flight rights (those rights have been held since the category was brought in by the Sport24 service).
It has also been announced that the first game each season from the UCL – on a Tuesday night, with the rest of the opening games following on the Wednesday and Thursday – will be a marquee and standalone fixture hosted by the winners of the previous season's competition.
