The media rights landscape for European soccer’s elite UEFA Champions League (UCL) over the next four-year cycle is taking shape, with broadcasters in five major European markets securing broadcast coverage rights this week.
For the first time, UEFA had tendered a global exclusive rights package for the UCL, but none of the bids lodged were high enough to compensate for reduced bids for other national packages.
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It has been reported that second bidding rounds were required in all five markets, the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, and France, for the ‘first-of-their-kind’ tenders, which went live in October.
This is the first tender process to be managed by US agency Relevent Sports, which replaced UEFA’s longstanding sales partner Team Marketing in that position last year (as was subsequently confirmed in March). In previous cycles, Team tendered rights for three seasons.
In all, an uplift of over 20% has been reported across the five key European markets.
In three of these countries – the UK, Germany, and Italy – the Amazon Prime Video streaming service extended its first-pick rights across Europe between 2027 and 2031, with these rights in the latter two markets shifting to Wednesday nights instead of Tuesday.
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By GlobalDataThe fact that Prime Video is bundled with Amazon’s Prime e-commerce offering has helped it cement its place as one of the most popular global streamers, and it has leveraged this position into strong UCL viewership, including breaking streaming records in the UK in the 2024-25 campaign.
Meanwhile, the 2027-31 rights tender was also a strong one for Sky, which, in addition to gains in the UK, also snapped up the rights to the UCL, second-tier Europa League, and third-tier Conference League in Italy across the cycle through its Sky Italia venture.
Sky will once again showcase 184 of the 203 UCL games each season, as well as all 342 Europa League and Conference League games per year, cementing its status as UEFA’s primary club competition broadcaster in Italy.
Sky will disseminate its coverage across its linear TV networks and the NOW TV over-the-top platform.
The remaining 19 UCL games will be shown exclusively by Prime Video, which has expanded its rights marginally by picking up an additional Thursday exclusive broadcast on the three-day UCL opening round.
In previous years, Sky had showcased matches not involving Italian teams on free-to-air, and that will continue with one game per week on the Sky-owned TV8 channel, with the additional commitment to a delayed broadcast each week on the free-to-air network Cielo, which is also Sky-owned.
In the Spanish market, meanwhile, Telefonica, which owns the Movistar+ pay-TV heavyweight, has retained exclusive rights to all UCL games, in addition to the Europa League, Conference League, and UEFA Super Cup, for an all-encompassing €1.46 billion ($1.68 billion) fee.
Public-service broadcaster RTVE retains co-exclusive rights to the UCL final only, with Movistar+ showcasing all other games, amounting to 545 games each year.
Telefonica also held exclusive UCL rights in Spain in the two previous cycles, although it used to split the Europa League and Conference League with Mediaset España, the Spanish arm of the Italy-based broadcasting group.
In France, major pay-TV operator Canal+ was the big winner, covering its lack of domestic Ligue 1 rights with exclusivity across the Champions League, Europa League, and Conference League, much like Telefonica in Spain.
Also like Telefonica, Canal+ will split the rights to the UCL final with commercial free-to-air network TF1, but in terms of the bulk of the games, Canal+ has edged out M6 (which it previously split rights with, during the 2024-27 cycle) to take full control over the package.
In Germany, the rights remained split once again, with Prime Video, Paramount+, OTT service DAZN, and public-service broadcaster ZDF all selecting different packages.
While Prime Video has the aforementioned UCL Wednesday first-pick package, Paramount+ has secured the UCL Tuesday first-pick package, as well as the rights to all other UCL games (including the final) and associated highlights rights.
Paramount’s efforts to make headway in Europe have seen it box out DAZN, which previously held primary UCL rights in the country.
DAZN has retained some UEFA pan-continental soccer, though, taking the all-encompassing rights for the Europa League and Conference League, previously held by RTL, the commercial broadcaster that now holds no rights at all.
ZDF, meanwhile, will showcase UCL highlights on a Wednesday night on a co-exclusive basis with Paramount+.
Paramount, then, seems to be the big winner from the tender, surpassing rivals in both the UK and Germany and rapidly increasing its sports market share in the two major territories for a strong four-year period.
Indeed, the streamer also secured the primary UCL broadcast coverage package in the UK, outbidding rival TNT Sports for the coveted suite of rights.
