This coming from John Ourand at the Sports Business Daily, Fox is expected to retain the rights to the UEFA Champions League, the European soccer club championship. The surprising news is that ESPN which is losing the FIFA World Cup after next year and possibly MLS too, did not even submit a bid.
On Tuesday of this week, UEFA received bids from beIN Sport, Fox, NBC and Univision. The organization was hoping for bids equaling or surpassing $100 million, but all of the networks came short of the total, so UEFA threw out them out for a second round on Thursday. Ourand reports that after not seeing much change in the bidding, UEFA opted to renew its rights deal with Fox which has aired CL matches since the 2009-10 season.
Ourand reports the bids did not even reach the $83 million annual fee NBC is paying to televise the English Premier League through 2016-17.
Fox will keep the English and Spanish language rights through 2017-18 and will utilize the Champions League to promote the FIFA World Cup which Fox will air in 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar.
ESPN hopes to sublicense some games, however, with Fox utilizing Fox Sports 1 and 2, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Sports Net and Fox Deportes, that scenario may be unlikely. It leaves ESPN with a soccer inventory that includes MLS through 2014 and the EURO 2016 competition, but little else.
And NBC was hoping to win the CL rights as a way to bolster its soccer holdings along with the English Premier League and MLS, but apparently UEFA chose to go with its familiar partner.
Now the next soccer rights to go for bid will be MLS and we’ll see if ESPN and NBC can remain as partners.
