How do football television rights work in Europe?

[XJaymz]

After reading the How Do You Watch Your Team Thread i've noticed that its not as easy to watch football in Europe as I thought.

In Australia, we have laws that ensure that major sports of a 'national intrest' must be shown on free-to-air, normal broadcast TV, and that pay TV services can only take them if all the broadcast networks decline them. And no sports, other than boxing, are on pay-per-view. If their on cable, its a regular cable channel like FOX sports.

From reading that otehr thread though, it seemed to indicate that not only do you have to pay to see games on TV, but in some cases, it on pay-per-view, and you even have to sign up to a specific clubs channel?

How does is work, I've never been to Europe.

 

[Punkt]

in portugal the SuperLiga teams sold his own TV rights. all clubs (except Leiria) have contract with Olivedesportos, an enterprise that resold them to RTP (national channel) and SportTV (pay-TV cable sports channel)
RTP broadcast 1 live game per week
SportTV broadcast 4 games per week.

The Champions League TV rights are hold by UEFA that sold him to TEAM. this enterprise resold them to the TV channels all over europe. In Portugal RTP and SportTV have bought them. RTP broadcast all Porto games.

In the UEFA Cup, the TV rights are hold by the clubs individually. they sold them directly to the TV stations that are interested.

about the "national interest" it happens in portugal.
the Portuguese Cup final, and all National team games must be in opne channel.i think that in the rest of europe the situation is very similar.

hope it helps

 

[shokz]

This is for England.(I dont know about Scotland, Wales, N.Ire etc)

The Premier League have sold TV packages for Premier League/Premiership games to Sky(Sky Sports), some games get sold on Premiership Plus for £5 or £7 depending which TV Digital company your with(Telewest/NTL/Sky).

Sky Sports & ITV have Champions League games, Sky Sports is better, as you can choose which game you want to watch by pressing the red button on the remote on 'Sky Sports XTRA' Channel or you can watch 8 games at once as shown in the screenshot I've uploaded.

Sky Sports have Die Bundesliga highlights.
Sky Sports get to show Spanish La Liga games live.
Sky Sports have Live TV package(s) for The Football League games(Nationwide Division 1, 2 and 3).
Sky Sports also have TV a package for The Carling/League Cup, I dont know if BBC also have though.
Sky Sports usually put Champions League highlights on ALL day(more than 12 hours) on Tuesday's and Wednesdays.

Sky Sports have a Premiership highlight package, which is shown on Sunday's 12pm noon till 2pm called "Goals on Sunday" whilst ITV have a highlight package shown Saturday nights, called "The Premiership" - BBC have acquired the package for next season, bringing back "Match of the Day" and killing off, "The Premiership" thank god.

British Eurosport have TV rights to Serie A, Champions League highlight package

BBC + Sky Sports both show England matches.
BBC get first choice on FA Cup games.
BBC show Old Firm matches live.

Channel 4 and FIVE broadcast Argentinian Football, Brazilian Football, Dutch Football, Major League Soccer a couple of nights a week, Copa Libertadores also.

MUTV - Manchester United's own Television Channel
You get all the Manchester United games 1 or 2 days after the match itself.
You get Most, if not all, of Reserve games and Youth games live
Interviews etc, well worth it for a few quid a month subscription.

 

[$teauA]

i dont live in romania now but i used to live there, and over there there are 16 teams in the league meaning 8 games a matchday. every matchday only one game is not shown on tv. 7 stations each show a game live every matchday.

 

[monkee]

Shokz basically said it but I'd like to add that for the England games I think it works that BBC get the home games and Sky Sports get the away games live.

All of Wales' internationals are shown on BBC2.

UEFA cup is shown on channel 5, terrestrial.

The complication with rights to the Premiership in the UK is to do with the games on Saturday. I'm not entirely sure of the rule but I think it's that ITV has the rights to show the games played on Saturday afternoon before any other channel, although Sky alone have the right to show live Premiership games. It basically means that until ITV have shown the highlights on Saturday night no-one else can show anything.

The work-around has been that if there is a big game, such as a Man Utd vs Liverpool, then the game kicks off at 11.45am on the Saturday morning giving Sky the ability to show the game live, but this only seems to apply to big games.

 

[Elber2k3]

In Germany
All Bundesliga Matches are live on Premiere (Pay-TV)
The 2. Bundeliga Matches are also live at Premiere,but in a conference or whatever it´s called in english.
DSF shows the Monday Evening Match of 2.Bundesliga Live.

ARD has 2 Live Matches each season and the Saturday 1.Bundesliga Highlights.
DSF hast the sunday Highlights and im not sure if they still show the 2.Bundesliga Highlights.

Every week one Champions League Match is shown on Sat1
Premiere shows all matches.

DSF shows French League Serie A and Premier League Highlights every Monday (or Tuesday i´m not sure) at 22:30
Saturday and Sunday Evenings Premiere shows a Serie A Match Live
One or two Premier League Matches per week is shown Live on Premiere.

Eurosport also has something but i´m not sure what.

The English in the text above sucks I´m not sure why but I wasn´t able to write better now. (Ok my German isn´t much better right now )

 

[::Jason::]

Here in Finland,

YLE (the national broadcaster) owns rights to Finland National teams Away games and to some Veikkausliiga (the finnish league) matches. Then there are some big matches like FA Cup starting from quarterfinals, SuperCup final, UEFA cup final, world cup&euro , and some UCL or UEFA matches of Finnish clubs.

Then there´s MTV3 , which also shows some Veikkausliiga and international matches.

Nelonen (the fourth free channel) has the UCL tv-rights and uses them to show a match/matchweek and then they have the weekly magazine.

I also often watch very entertaining Swedish football on SVT Europa - Fotbollskväll..

 

[shokz]

I've edited my post(After finding out Eurosport have Serie A!)

Come on, I want to know what everyone else gets on there tele.

 

[SB9Dragon]

You've got it so easy Shokz, thats freakin nirvana... you can watch all 8 CL games at once I only get 1 a week you get all leagues?? You can actually watch every game of your favorite team!!?? I gotta move to Europe... but how??

 

[shokz]

I'm spoilt =(

 

[rumanu?]

i wish i had sky again

sbs and fox, and espn are poor compared to sky sports.


sky sports must come to australia:Bow:

from what i remember, eurosport used to do all the international football (world cup, euro)

they do then best coverage of wintersport too

 

[bizjer]

In Uk also we can get Setanta sport which has pay per view Celtic and Rangers games.Can be got in addition to all the other good stuff sky have.I have to say I think that in the UK we are spoilt with the amount of football we get.Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, MLS, S.A. Football, Serie A, Argentine, Dutch, International.Champions League coverage now is the best thing sinced sliced bread.Fair enough I rarely watch some of the non British sides but to have the option is very satisfying.

 

[jackie4]

The SPL so far has operated on a fixed term contract with the its agreed live broadcaster. When the SPL started in 1998 they had a 4 year deal with SKY and since 2002 they have had a 2 year deal with the BBC. As we speak this deal runs out in May and so far no new deal has been agreed.

 

[Fernandez]

i wish i had sky too...but im in asia..... so i can only watch three CL matches a day....two live, one delayed....

 

[shokz]

Originally posted by Carlos*ie4
The SPL so far has operated on a fixed term contract with the its agreed live broadcaster. When the SPL started in 1998 they had a 4 year deal with SKY and since 2002 they have had a 2 year deal with the BBC. As we speak this deal runs out in May and so far no new deal has been agreed.

I would not bet against Sky(bskyb?) going after a deal with SPL.

 

[eddy_87]

In Malaysia, u can see EPL, Italian Serie A and Spanish

EPL Saturday : 4 matches
EPL Sunday: 2 matches
FA Cup: 2
Carling Cup: 3 matches

Italian Serie A: i dunno how many but quite a lot
Spanish: 3 i think (madrid match is a MUST)

Champions League: 2 Live and 1 Delayed

Other matches, International & etc is shown too (big matches only)

I'm quite satisfied with it....

 

[Fernandez]

what channels do you get.... ? here in s'pore, i get ESPN ,StarSports ,Supersports and Supersports Plus...

ESPN and StarSports show the EPL and CL matches while Supersports and Supersports Plus shows the Carling Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Cup(but no final), Community Shield, Italian Serie A and La Liga.... ESPN also shows the CL and UEFA Cup final and the UEFA Super Cup.... and also La Liga... i prefer ESPN's La Liga than Supersports coz Supersports and Supersports Plus commentary is very hard to understand....

 

[eddy_87]

Originally posted by Fernandez
what channels do you get.... ? here in s'pore, i get ESPN ,StarSports ,Supersports and Supersports Plus...

ESPN and StarSports show the EPL and CL matches while Supersports and Supersports Plus shows the Carling Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Cup(but no final), Community Shield, Italian Serie A and La Liga.... ESPN also shows the CL and UEFA Cup final and the UEFA Super Cup.... and also La Liga... i prefer ESPN's La Liga than Supersports coz Supersports and Supersports Plus commentary is very hard to understand....

same here
but we dont have supersport plus

 

[champdave]

I hate ITV, they only show Tuesday matches. TF1 shows a CL match on Tuesday, so I get to watch no matches on Wednesday!

 

[shokz]

Originally posted by champdave
I hate ITV, they only show Tuesday matches. TF1 shows a CL match on Tuesday, so I get to watch no matches on Wednesday!

u get itv in france?

http://www.sky.com/skycom/tvguide/0,,524-0,00.html

football heaven on tuesdays/wednesdays.