Japanese satellite TV network Wowow has retained exclusive broadcast rights to European soccer’s UEFA men’s club competitions for another four seasons and added the UEFA Women's Champions League (UWCL) to its offering for the first time.
Through the agreement for the men’s competitions, Wowow will continue to show the elite UEFA Champions League (UCL), secondary Europa League, and third-tier Conference League through the 2030-31 season.
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The network will provide linear television broadcast and streaming coverage of all three competitions on its Wowow On Demand OTT service. It also holds rights to exclusively air select fixtures from the UEFA Youth League.
Wowow already holds domestic UEFA club rights for the 2024-27 cycle, securing an early renewal for a key property. The pay-television broadcaster has been the rights holder since the 2020-21 season.
The 2024-25 campaign was the first to utilize the new expanded formats of the UCL, Europa League, and Conference League, with the competitions increasing in size from 32 teams to 36 and each side playing eight games as opposed to the previous six. The group stage format was also scrapped and replaced by a single league table before the knockouts.
Several top Japanese players often compete across Europe's top competitions, making the rights an attractive prospect in the country.
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By GlobalDataSuch players include Liverpool midfielder and Japanese national team captain Wataru Endo, AS Monaco’s Takumi Minamino, Celtic’s Reo Hatate and Daizen Maeda, Ritsu Dōan (Eintracht Frankfurt), Ko Itakura (Ajax), and Ayase Ueda (Feyenoord).
Meanwhile, Wowow’s new deal for the UWCL will begin from the quarter-final stage of this season’s competition.
The broadcaster will exclusively live stream all matches, including the semi-finals and final.
Wowow will then broadcast and stream the entire season from the league phase through to the final for four seasons from 2026-27 to 2029-30.
The knockout phase of this season’s competition begins on March 25, with Wolfsburg vs OL Lyonnes, Real Madrid vs FC Barcelona Femeni, Manchester United vs Bayern München, and reigning champions Arsenal vs Chelsea.
The final will be played at Ullevaal Stadion in Oslo, Norway, on May 23.
The UWCL features several Japanese women's national team players, including Bayern's Momoko Tanigawa and Manchester United's Hinata Miyazawa.
Wowow has a strong portfolio of elite sports rights that features rugby union’s Super Rugby Pacific competition, golf’s Ladies PGA Tour, basketball’s NBA, tennis’ ATP Tour, and several high-profile boxing cards.
The deal was announced by UC3, the joint venture between UEFA and European Football Clubs that controls the marketing, sales, and delivery of commercial rights for UEFA club competitions.
In terms of other recent deals, Ziggo Sport, the Dutch broadcaster, is set to retain its rights to the UEFA club competitions in the Netherlands for the next cycle after becoming the governing body's preferred bidder. It was unveiled earlier this month that Ziggo has entered into an exclusive negotiation period with UC3.
In Mexico, meanwhile, Telecoms giant America Movil has added the Europa League and Conference League to its UCL deal in Mexico and Central America.
At the start of March, UEFA, through its partner agency Relevent Sports, launched a UCL broadcast rights tender for the next four-season cycle – beginning in 2027-28 – in 19 markets across Europe, Central America, and South America.
