Rivals battle over Champions League soccer rights expected to top $2B
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Soccer's biggest annual event has its U.S. broadcast rights back on the block, and a number of traditional and next-generation media firms are squaring off in the latest high-dollar sports showdown.
The Union of European Football Associations is expected today to start soliciting bids for U.S. TV rights to the Champions League, with bids due Aug. 15 - and the offers are expected to double current prices, to at least $2B for a six-year deal.
CBS (NASDAQ:PARA) (PARAA) and Univision (TV) currently hold the rights in a three-year deal running from 2021-2024. Turner Broadcasting (WBD), then part of AT&T, held the rights before that.
But the new bids can pursue a six-year deal until 2030, offering more time to bidders to ramp up marketing and production.
And UEFA has had preliminary talks with a wide variety of competitors, Bloomberg reports: NBC (NASDAQ:CMCSA), ESPN (DIS), CBS (PARA) (PARAA), Fox (FOX) (FOXA), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Univision (TV), DAZN - and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).
In a benefit to streamers in this new era, Champions League is now relaxing a requirement that a minimum number of matches appear on legacy TV.
Amazon (AMZN) just sealed its deal to show Champions League in the UK for the first time, while Apple (AAPL) has a football landmark of its own in a 10-year deal for Major League Soccer.