Paramount has reportedly landed UEFA Champions League rights in some European countries; an ESPN executive says ingestion remains important to the company; and The CW is looking for more Bowl games. Plus news on Teddy Atlas, F1, Stuart Scott and Rebecca Lobo.
Paramount reportedly landing UEFA Champions League rights in UK, Ireland, Germany
Paramount has reportedly acquired rights to “the majority” of UEFA Champions League games in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and Germany beginning in 2027, according to Matt Slater of The Athletic. The deal — among the first under a new tender process launched in tandem with the European football clubs under their UC3 joint venture — would push out incumbent TNT Sports, which has held the rights since 2013. Of course, Paramount may end up purchasing TNT parent co. Warner Bros. Discovery and is said to have recently submitted another bid.
Amazon’s Prime Video will continue holding first-pick Champions League matches on Tuesdays in the U.K. and Ireland, while the date for first-pick games in Germany and Italy is shifting to Wednesday. The company first started presenting matches for Germany and Italy in 2021, and it added the U.K. and Ireland three years later.
Relevent is currently serving as the worldwide marketing and sales partner for men’s club competitions spanning from 2027 to 2033. The European football governing body is said to be seeking in excess of €5billion ($5.8 million) in annual media revenue across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In the United States, Paramount-owned CBS reached an extension of its media rights deal for the UEFA Champions League three years ago, and the contract is said to run through 2030 for $250 million/year. The deal, which was negotiated before the Skydance merger (“Paramount Global”) under former CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus, was reportedly valued at 2.5 times its previous U.S. pact.
Lasker: Ingestion remains important to ESPN
ESPN+ SVP John Lasker said at a recent event hosted by Sports Business Journal that the company has no issue with third-party streamers “ingesting” its content, saying that it has been standard practice for most of the network’s history and that “ESPN, ESPN2 and others have been on these third-party platforms forever” without impacting the company’s ability to grow its own competing platforms.
Lasker added that ‘ingestion’ into YouTube TV will help “solve the problem” of fragmentation, helping to drive consumption by meeting viewers where they are. Lasker: “We should all be in the spirit of trying to get as much of our content in front of fans wherever they decide to show up and consume it, and that’s really the basis of ingestion.”
Under its new multiyear distribution agreement with The Walt Disney Company signed last week, YouTube TV is permitted to carry select live and on-demand programming from ESPN Unlimited. Alex Sherman of CNBC reported Thursday that YouTube TV is paying a per-subscriber fee to ingest this content on its platform, equating such to garnering “a glorified ESPN+.”
While some media companies have fought Google on the issue of ingestion during recent carriage negotiations, YouTube TV has succeeded in integrating some DTC-based content onto the service. LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield referred to the deal as a victory for YouTube TV subscribers and said that fragmentation is “the biggest issue in [the] streaming wars that isn’t getting enough attention.”
Schwartz: The CW is interested in more Bowl games
Nexstar-owned CW is interested in potentially adding more college football bowl games to its portfolio, with network president Brad Schwartz saying at the aforementioned SBJ event that he feels the company could have “a great opportunity to pick off some games” from ESPN or other networks. CW this season will carry the Arizona Bowl for the third time.
Schwartz also underscored the value of broadcast networks amid changes in the media landscape. “I think the reach of broadcast is so important to leagues because we can get the most amount of people to come watch these games,” Schwartz said. “More and more often, we’re seeing bowl games, we’re seeing sports go to kind of niche streamers or behind some paywall, and if that’s where your bowl game’s going, I don’t think that’s the best solution for getting the most amount of people to watch your game.”
Disney-owned networks (ESPN/ABC/ESPN2) averaged 2.7 million viewers across non-CFP Bowl Games last season, up 14% YoY. The Disney networks own rights to all bowl games outside of the Holiday Bowl (Fox), Sun Bowl (CBS) and Arizona Bowl (The CW). Disney-owned ESPN holds the rights for the College Football Playoff through 2032, but it does sublicense select early-round games to TNT Sports under a separate agreement.
Plus: Teddy Atlas, F1, Stuart Scott, Rebecca Lobo
- Longtime boxing analyst and former trainer Teddy Atlas posted on social media earlier this week that he believes UFC 322 was his final event for ESPN. Atlas, who joined ESPN in 1998, has covered combat sports — primarily boxing — on programming like “Friday Night Fights” and “SportsCenter.” “It pulls on your heart a little bit,” Atlas said on his podcast Monday. “That’s a lot of years, a lot of memories, a lot of situations, a lot of experiences, a lot of fights, a lot of good, a few tough things involved in there, but it’s been quite a journey.”
- In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Liberty Media president/CEO Derek Chang said that he believes Apple is going to be “very active” in trying to secure global streaming rights for F1. The company recently announced a five-year deal for U.S. broadcasting rights to F1 said to be worth $150 million annually, and Chang said he views it as “a very strong partnership” that could be replicated “in other places.”
- ESPN will premiere its “30 for 30” episode about the life and career of former “SportsCenter” anchor Stuart Scott on Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 9 PM ET. Titled “Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott,” the documentary is being produced by ESPN Films, Run & Shoot Filmworks and Cinemation Studios.
- Rebecca Lobo has signed a multiyear contract extension with ESPN under which she will continue her work as an analyst and contributor, it was announced Thursday. Lobo has worked at the company for more than two decades and has paired with play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco and reporter Holly Rowe on WNBA and college basketball broadcasts.
