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*Rights in 2021-24 cycle across five Balkan markets to be worth €46m per season
• Uefa income rises 134 per cent in new deals with Telekom Srbija, HRT
• Aggressive competition between Telkom Srbija, United Media grows
Uefa has more than doubled the value of its club competition media rights across five Balkan countries, awarding almost all rights to aggressive bidder Telekom Srbija, as the telco’s battle with rival United Media intensified.
European football’s governing body sold rights to the Champions League, Europa League and newly-created third-tier Europa Conference League, from 2021-22 to 2023-24, in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. SportBusiness Media understands the combined value of the rights is about €46m ($50m) per season.
Uefa’s total income is an increase of about 134 per cent on the current 2018-19 to 2020-21 cycle, in which it earns about €19.65m per season from multiple deals across the five countries.
Serbian telco Telekom Srbija has won all Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League rights on offer in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia
In Croatia, public-service broadcaster HRT has renewed its rights to the first-pick Wednesday Champions League match. Telekom Srbija acquired all other rights in the country. Telekom Srbija’s total outlay across the five territories in the new 2021-24 cycle will be about €43m per season. HRT will pay about €3m per season for its package of rights.
Telekom Srbija owns the pay-television Arena Sport channels in the region through its subsidiary company HD-WIN.
Grafik: Bosna, Hırvatistan, Karadağ, Kuzey Makedonya, Sırbistan haklarını 2018-19 - 2020-21 döneminde 19,65 milyon avro; 2021-22 - 2023-24 döneminde 46milyon avro gösteriyor. Yeni anlaşmanın 43 milyonunu Telekom Srbija ödeyecek, 3 milyonunu çarşamba maçlarının Hırvatistan'da ilk seçim hakkına sahip olmak için HRT ödeyecek. Diğer tüm haklar Telekom Srbija'da bölgede.
Current deals Telekom Srbija is an incumbent rights-holder of Uefa club competitions in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia.
The telco pays about €2.8m per season and about €1.35m per season for its exclusive rights in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro, respectively.
In Serbia, it holds rights to all Champions League matches, apart from the first-pick Wednesday match, and all Europa League matches apart from the first pick. Serbian public-service broadcaster RTS acquired both the first-pick Wednesday Champions League matches and the first-pick Europa League matches.
The combined value of the rights in the country is about €7m per season for the 2018-21 cycle.
In Croatia, aside from HRT’s rights to the first-pick Wednesday Champions League match, all other Champions League matches are broadcast by Telekom Austria-owned telco A1 Hrvatska. Exclusive rights to the Europa League were acquired by telco Hrvatski Telekom. The value of the combined deals in Croatia for the 2018-21 cycle is about €6.5m per season.
In North Macedonia, telco Makedonski Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, holds exclusive rights to the Champions League and Europa League for the 2018-21 cycle, in deals worth about €2m per season.
First-round knockouts Uefa, through its exclusive club competition sales agent Team Marketing , launched ten tenders in the five territories on January 15; five in each territory for the Champions League and five in each for Europa League/Europa Conference League. Both tenders had a bid deadline of February 10. The Champions League tender also covered rights to the Uefa Super Cup and Uefa Youth League.
Telekom Srbija secured all rights in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia in the first round of bidding. In all three markets, the telco put in knockout first-round bids that were more than double the value of the current rights.
It was expecting aggressive competition from rival United Media. The media group owns the pay-television Sportklub channels and commercial Nova channels in the Balkan region. United Media is thought to have bid strongly – especially for rights in Serbia where it bid at least 50 per cent more than the current value – but it was not expecting Telekom Srbija’s level of aggression.
Uefa also awarded Telekom Srbija its Champions League rights in North Macedonia in the first round. Incumbent Makedonski Telekom is thought to have bid without getting close to Telekom Srbija’s offer.
Makedonski Telekom owner Deutsche Telekom has an exclusive distribution agreement with Telekom Srbija’s Arena Sport channels not only in North Macedonia, but also in Croatia and Montenegro.
Deutsche Telekom uses Arena Sport as its exclusive production partner in those Balkan territories where it acquires rights. Despite not having production capabilities, if it is the rightsholder of a certain property then it holds leverage over Telekom Srbija in carriage negotiations.
Several market experts predict that going forward, Telekom Srbija will seek to distribute its Arena Sport channels more widely, as opposed to exclusively with Deutsche Telekom, in order to maximise revenue.
Croatia battle
Uefa awarded rights in Croatia to all three club competitions, and in North Macedonia to the Europa League and Europa Conference, after a second round of bidding that took place on February 14.
In Croatia, competition for the rights was also strong. In addition to the eventual winners, Telekom Srbija and HRT, bids emerged from United Media and incumbent Champions League rights-holder Telekom Austria.
Telekom Srbija will pay about €7m per season for its Champions League rights in Croatia for the 2021-24 cycle. This is an increase in value of about 150 per cent on the approximate €2.8m per season Telekom Austria currently pays for the same rights.
HRT will pay about 76 per cent more for its first-pick Champions League match in the 2021-24 cycle; it pays about €1.7m per season in the 2018-21 cycle.
For the Europa League and Europa Conference League, Telekom Srbija will pay about €4m per season for its 2021-24 rights. Hrvatski Telekom currently pays about €2m per season for its Europa League rights.
At the time of the previous tender, several market experts suggested Hrvatski Telekom overpaid for its rights. It is thought the telco was surprised when Uefa awarded the Champions League rights to rival Telekom Austria and wanted to compensate with the Europa League.
United v Telekom Industry experts were surprised at how far Telekom Srbija was prepared to go to secure the Uefa club competition rights and speculated on how it would finance the expenditure.
Telekom Srbija is state-owned, and it is thought United Media believe that to be an unfair advantage as the telco does not have to justify business decisions, nor does it believe that the Serbian state should be funding these commercial agreements. United Media is owned by private equity firm BC Partners.
Several local executives told SportBusiness Media that the commercial battle between Telekom Srbija and United Media has become political. Serbian prime minister Ana Brnabić has publicly commented on the ongoing carriage dispute between the two for the distribution of United Media’s news channel N1, siding with Telekom Srbija.
Telekom Srbija and United Media have competed for sports rights for many years but have also been able to agree carriage deals for the latter’s Sportklub channels.
Telekom Srbija has been acquiring a host of smaller cable operators over the last two years, including several that already had distribution agreements with Sportklub. Talks have been ongoing between United Media and the Telekom-owned operators, which use the collective brand name Supernova.
It is thought United Media was trying to get Telekom Srbija to specifically identify the cable operators in its network that would be able to access the Sportklub channels to avoid overspill. United Media wanted these specifics in the contract, rather than just a verbal promise from Telekom Srbija, to be able to accurately understand the distribution.
However, Telekom Srbija has claimed in local press that United Media wanted to restrict its expansion as a price for securing a deal. It also claimed that a major barrier in the negotiations was United Media’s launch of a new subscription channel, Nova Sport, in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. Sportklub remains in all markets, with Nova using selected content. The telco claimed that United Media had failed to guarantee any specifics on the existing content that would remain on Sportklub.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Southeast Asia market report 29 April 2020
Pan-regional trends and players
Sports-media rights in Southeast Asia are usually sold on a country-by-country basis. However, some rights-holders decide to sell on a pan-regional basis, which can cover Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and others.
Many of these markets have seen common trends in recent years, with a fluctuation in media-rights values and a general slowdown in growth. Moreover, the shutdown of live sport due to the Covid-19 pandemic has stopped some media-rights payments and negotiations for key properties like the German Bundesliga, Asian Football Confederation events and the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Pay-television Fox Sports Asia (part of the Disney-owned Fox Network Group) is the main pan-regional broadcaster and dominates the market. Fox took the place of ESPN Star Sports (ESS), the joint venture between News Corp and Disney that dominated the Asian market from the early 2000s until it was dissolved in 2012, with News Corp buying out Disney’s 50-per-cent stake. In 2019, Disney took over the ownership of the broadcaster as part of a larger takeover.
Japan
The Japanese market was shaken up by the entry of OTT platform DAZN in 2016. Since then, DAZN has pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy and currently holds rights to four out of the ten most valuable properties in the market.
However, public-service broadcasters have been able to retain major rights such as the Olympic Games, Fifa World Cup and Asian Football Confederation events. Japanese agency Dentsu is also extremely active on the market.
The most valuable property in the market is the domestic J.League football competition. DAZN acquired rights in a ten-season deal, from 2017 to 2026, worth about $205m (€185m) per season. The deal represented a 320-per-cent increase on the value of the league’s previous five-year deal, from 2012 to 2016, with pay-television operator SkyPerfecTV.
Japan is also the most important international market for Major League Baseball. Dentsu has been a long-term league partner and currently holds rights from 2016 to 2020 in a deal worth about $62m per year.
South Korea
The South Korean market has experienced a downturn in sports-rights fees in recent years. Advertising is the primary source of revenue for the television business in South Korea, and growth has slowed.
Two of the biggest properties in Southeast Asia, like the Asian Football Confederation and the English Premier League, were not able to retain value in South Korea and have seen rights revenue decrease in their new cycles.
However, domestic properties’ values have remained stable. In February, the Korea Pool (a consortium composed of SBS, KBS and MBC) acquired linear and IPTV rights for the Korea Baseball Organisation’s 2020 to 2023 seasons, worth an average of $46.7m per season. The deal adds to an earlier agreement between the KBO and the digital consortium group consisting of telcos KT, LG Uplus and SK Broadband and South Korea’s two biggest internet portals, Naver and Kakao. That deal for digital rights, runs from 2019 to 2023 and is worth about $18.5m per season.
At the same time, pay-television broadcaster JTBC agreed to a deal for domestic K-League football media rights for the 2020-23 cycle, worth about $5m per season.
Free-to-air broadcasters such as SBS, KBS, SBS and MBC hold rights to some of the most valuable properties in the market, including the Fifa World Cup and the Olympics. Media group Eclat Entertainment is the main pay-television broadcaster and exploits its rights through its SpoTV platform.
Thailand
Similar to South Korea, the Thai market has become tougher in recent years, as both pay-television subscribers and advertising revenue has fallen since 2017.
Pay-television broadcaster TrueVisions is one of the most active broadcasters, holding rights to two of the most valuable properties in the market, the English Premier League and Thai League 1.
The most valuable property in the market is the Premier League. TrueVisions currently holds rights with a deal worth about $45m per year from 2019-20 to 2021-22. The deal also covers Cambodia and Laos and represents a decrease of about 50 per cent on what beIN Media paid for the same set of rights, from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
TrueVisions also holds domestic rights to Thai League 1 in a deal from 2017 to 2020 worth about $29.5m per season. The deal represented a 75-per-cent increase in value on the previous agreement, covering seasons from 2014 to 2016. The property is sold separately from the Thai Football Association rights, which are held by the Plan B Media agency in four-year global media-rights deal worth about $23.4m per year, from 2017 to 2020.
Malaysia
The Malaysian market is dominated by pay-television broadcaster Astro, which in the last year, has been able to retain rights to the most valuable properties on the market at reduced rates. The country has also been affected by the wider regional issue of falling advertising revenue and declining subscriptions.
Astro managed to reduce its outlay on the English Premier League in its latest deal worth about $55m per year, from 2019-20 to 2021-22. This is about 8-per-cent less than it was paying for the same set of rights, from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
Astro also holds rights to Uefa National teams competitions, WWE and the Malaysian Hockey Federation.
Similar to international properties, domestic properties have not been able to retain or increase their value. In February, Telekom Malaysia agreed to a joint media and sponsorship rights deal for the Malaysian Football League’s properties worth about $7m per season over the three seasons from 2020 to 2022. The deal represents a 50-per-cent decline compared to a previous deal with TM that collapsed in 2019.
Singapore
The Singaporean market is similar to Malaysia. It is dominated by a pay-television broadcaster, Singtel, which has been able to keep sports-rights fees pretty flat over the past few years.
Singtel currently holds rights to the English Premier League in a deal worth about $52m per year from 2019-20 to 2021-22. At the time, the Premier League had started to test the ground for the launch of an OTT platform in the country. But despite these plans, the league agreed a deal that was about 34-per-cent less than Singtel paid for the same set of rights from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
However, some rights-holders were able to maintain the value of their properties such as the IOC, for the Olympic Games and Uefa, for
Euro 2020 and national team qualifiers.
Vietnam
In the last few years, several companies have tried to launch sports offerings in Vietnam such as Facebook and DAZN. However, in both cases, key acquisitions were derailed and traditional broadcasters were able to swoop.
K Plus, a joint-venture between French pay-television Canal Plus and state-owned broadcaster VTV, agreed to a deal worth about $24m per season with the English Premier League after an initial deal with Facebook worth about $25m per season was cancelled.
Pay-television broadcaster SCTV sublicensed rights to Spain’s LaLiga from DAZN after the latter had originally acquired rights to LaLiga in a deal worth about $4m per season, from 2018-19 to 2022-23. The OTT platform had to sublicense its rights to cut losses on the property after postponing its plans to launch. The sublicensing deal is worth about $4m per season.
Indonesia
The Indonesian market has been impacted by the entry of OTT platform Mola TV in 2018. Mola’s activity has helped make Indonesia one of the few growing sports media-rights markets in south-east Asia.
English Premier League is the leading property on the market and was Mola’s first significant acquisition. The OTT platform currently holds rights with a deal worth about $40m per year from 2019-20 to 2021-22. The agreement represents a 41-per-cent increase on the value of the deal with previous rights-holder beIN Media Group. Mola TV also holds rights to Indonesian football association events in a deal worth about $20m per year over the three years from 2019 to 2021.
Before Mola’s entrance, like many other Asia-Pacific markets, Indonesia looked to be entering a period of stagnation or decline in rights values. The market has several large media groups and broadcasters that are active in the sports-rights market including MNC, Emtek, Trans Media, Viva, Kompas and public-service broadcaster TVRI. However, despite the competition, many sports rights properties were recently considered to have hit the ceiling in terms of values and affordability.
Uefa had to resell its club competition rights in the country due to the Futbol Momentum Asia agency failing to make its payments on its $10m to $11m per season contract. Uefa went back to the market last year, agreeing a two-season deal with media company Elang Mahkota Teknologi (Emtek) worth about $8m per season covering 2019-20 and 2020-21.
Middle East and Africa market report 27 january 2020
The rise of Mena
According to the 2019 SportBusiness Consulting Global Report, the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) was the seventh-most valuable media market in the world, the first time the region has entered the top 10 in the report. Media rights in Mena generated about $1.2bn (€1.08bn) in 2019, accounting for 2.4 per cent of the total global sports-rights market.
From 2018 to 2019, the Mena media-rights market grew by 13.7 per cent, and last year’s media-rights revenue was 32-per-cent higher than in 2017. Among the top 10 global markets, Mena is the third-fastest growing media rights market, with a growth forecast of 7.6-per-cent CAGR to 2022.
Differently from other markets in the top 10, the growth of the media-rights market value in the Mena region is mainly driven by the increase in the value of international properties. Football remains the main sport in the region, with eight out of 10 of the most valuable properties being international football competitions.
BeIN Media Group, a Qatar-based pay-television broadcaster, dominates the market, owning rights to nine out of the top 10 properties. However, beIN might be reluctant to invest more in the future due to conflicts with the beoutQ pirate broadcaster in the region.
Yousef Al-Obaidly, chief executive of beIN Media Group, addressed the issue last year, saying that beIN “now regard all sports rights as non-exclusive and our commercial offers will reflect that”.A market focused on international properties
Uefa Champions League and Europa League rights are the most valuable media rights in Mena, with about 22 per cent of the market share, valued at $278m per season for the 2018-19 to 2020-21 cycle. The 208-per-cent increase in the value of rights to Uefa’s club competitions in that cycle impacted the whole Mena media-rights market in 2019 and helped to sustain the regional market growth.
The top European football domestic leagues are also amongst the most valuable properties in the region.
The English Premier League generates about $155m per season from its three-season deal with beIN, from 2019-20 to 2021-22. This represents an 8-per-cent increase on the previous deal in the region. Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s LaLiga generate about $123.9m and $90m per season, respectively, from their current media-rights deals in the region. Last year, LaLiga agreed to a new deal with beIN until 2023-24 worth about $95m per season. Germany’s Bundesliga currently generates about $49m per season in a deal with beIN that is ending at the end of this season.
The only two non-football properties in the top 10 most valuable properties are the FIA Formula One World Championship and the Olympic Games. For the first, Dubai-based free-to-air MBC Media holds a deal worth between $35m and $36m per season, until 2023.
MBC supplanted beIN for the F1 rights, that previously held rights in a deal worth about $41m per year until the end of 2018. BeIN had acquired F1 rights for 2014 to 2018 from the now-defunct MP & Silva agency, that bought rights for about $35m per season. BeIN holds rights to four editions of the Olympic Games until 2024 for $250m, which was a 290-per-cent increase on the IOC’s previous deal with the Arab States Broadcasting Union for the 2014 and the 2016 editions of the games.
The sub-Saharan Africa media-rights market generates about 40 per cent of the amount generated by the Mena region. In 2019, media rights from the top 10 most valuable properties in sub-Saharan Africa generated about $539m, accounting for about 1 per cent of the total global sports-rights market.
From 2018 to 2019 the sub-Saharan media-rights market grew by 11 per cent, mainly driven by the renewal of the English Premier League, the most valuable property in the region.
Similar to the Mena region, the growth of the media-rights market in sub-Saharan Africa has mainly been driven by the increase in the value of international properties. Only one out of the top 10 most valuable deals in the region is for the rights to a property with domestic interest: Sanzaar rugby union.
Pay-television broadcaster SuperSport dominates the market with about $478m per season invested in retaining rights to seven out of the top 10 properties in the market. Pay-television rival StarTimes holds rights to the remaining top properties.
Both broadcasters took advantage of the decision by Econet Media Limited to put an end to the Kwese TV pay-television service in 2019, which allowed the other competitors to secure rights to important competitions and bolster their portfolios.
The English Premier League is the most valuable property in sub-Saharan Africa, having a 44-per-cent market share, and generating about $237.5 per season from its deal for the 2019-22 cycle. This represents a 25-per-cent increase in the value of the Premier Leagues rights in the region compared to the previous 2016-17 to 2018-19 cycle.
The value of Uefa’s Champions League rights also dwarfs the other properties in sub-Saharan Africa with about 30-per-cent of the market share, with Uefa generating $150m per season from its deal for the 2018-21 cycle. This represents a 13-per-cent increase in the value of these rights in the region compared to the previous 2015-16 to 2017-18 cycle.
SuperSport currently pays about $45m per season in a deal from 2016 until the end of 2020 for Sanzaar events, which involve the South African Rugby team. The fee is composed of a $26m-per-year deal with Sanzaar for the Rugby Championship and the Super Rugby competitions, as well as a $19m-per-year deal with the South African Rugby Union for the domestic Currie Cup and other domestic properties, including some home national-team matches.
In December 2019, SuperSport renewed its Sanzaar rights until 2025, paying a similar amount to the current cycle.
Although the Middle Eastern and African media markets rely almost completely on international properties, both still generate a modest amount of revenue for domestic rights-holders, both internationally and domestically.
Confederation of African Football (CAF) events are the most valuable African properties, as a result of 12-year global media and sponsorship agreement, from 2017 to 2028, with French agency Lagardère, worth a total of about $1bn. However, in 2019, CAF cancelled the contract following multiple regulatory rulings in Africa. Lagardère has contested the body’s right to terminate. A decision on the case has yet to be finalised, although in December 2019, the International Chamber of Commerce rejected Lagardère’s application for interim emergency measures aimed at keeping the contract in force pending the arbitration on merits.
BeIN Media Group and SuperSport both agreed to deals with Lagardère for CAF rights in Mena and sub-Saharan Africa, respectively. BeIN signed to a 12-year deal worth about $400m, while SuperSport agreed to pay about $130m for an eight-year contract until 2024.
CAF also agreed to a direct deal with the African Union of Broadcasters for free-to-air rights to CAF events until the end of 2022 worth about $40m.
Another valuable domestic property in the market is the Saudi Professional League (SPL), which is worth about $176m per season globally. The Saudi Arabian Football Federation agreed to a 10-season deal with Saudi Telecom Company in February 2018, registering a 61-per-cent increase on the previous deal with MBC Media. However, in 2019, STC announced that it planned to terminate the deal.
Apart from football, cricket is also a valuable sport in the market. In 2015, SuperSport agreed to a deal with Cricket South Africa for rights to its home events, from 2015 to 2021, worth about $7.3m per season.
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