Uefa is keeping quiet about who will get the rights for the Champions League
Swiss TV stations have submitted their bids. But UEFA might consider them too low.
Interested parties had until December 3 to submit bids for the TV rights to the UEFA Champions League. It is not known who all bid. However, Swiss television SRF and pay-TV broadcaster Teleclub were among them. Both want to maintain the status quo. Teleclub is currently the only provider to hold the rights for all matches, can show everything at the same time and has invested in a new TV center in Volketswil for this purpose. The rights currently cost the Swisscom subsidiary CHF 20 million per year.
SRF got away relatively cheaply with the new, slimmed-down offer. For three million francs a year, SRF 2 is allowed to show one match on Wednesday evenings. In November, it was announced that SRG is interested in continuing to offer this service to viewers in the future - provided this can be reconciled with the budget, which is under pressure to make savings (Werbewoche.ch reported).
Teleclub is said to have improved the offer
However, it is unclear whether it worked. Uefa is keeping a low profile. As SRF Head of Sport Roland Mägerle told the SonntagsBlick says that the football association has not yet been contacted. The newspaper suspects that Uefa is not yet satisfied with the amount of the bids submitted. And this despite the fact that Teleclub has reportedly "significantly improved" its offer, the SonntagsBlick know.
Cross-border competition
The example of Germany could show that Uefa senses an opportunity for even higher revenues: The contract with Sky, the previous provider in Germany, was not renewed. Instead, the rights went to the two internet platforms Amazon and DAZN. They share the Tuesday and Wednesday matches. ZDF was able to secure the final.
According to SonntagsBlick industry insiders suspect that the offers from Teleclub and SRF are competing with cross-border offers for the DACH region. For example, one of the contractors in Germany could be interested in also being allowed to manage Switzerland for an additional charge or with a combined discount.
For viewers, the split allocation of rights has one main consequence: more and more subscriptions are needed to be able to watch everything. This results in higher costs.
