The United Kingdom’s public broadcaster, BBC has inked a sublicensing deal with the media company, Discovery for highlights rights to the Australian Open 2022.
This year’s first Grand Slam began in Melbourne on Monday, but the BBC will not begin to show the highlights until Saturday (January 22).
The BBC will air daily one-hour highlights of the tournament’s latter stages on BBC One and BBC Two, except January 29, when a two-hour programme will be aired.
Discovery owns the UK rights of the Australian Open, and this year’s tournament is the first under a new 10-year contract signed in September with Tennis Australia. The new agreement extends Eurosport’s association with the Australian Open, which began in 1995, and includes all linear and digital rights to the tournament throughout Europe.
The BBC had media rights to the Australian Open until 2015 when it relinquished them to Eurosport in a sublicensing agreement.
In India, however, the Australian Open 2022 will be available on Sony Sports Network. The competition will be live on the channels – SONY SIX, SONY TEN 2, SONY TEN 3, and SONY TEN 4.
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), the organiser and commercial rights-holder of the Wimbledon Grand Slam, extended its contract with the BBC for media rights to the tournament until 2027 in July.
The BBC aired highlights of Emma Raducanu‘s historic 2021 US Open final victory over fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez in September. The tournament’s rights are held by Amazon in the UK and Ireland, but the BBC had agreed to show a one-hour highlights programme following Raducanu’s progress to the final in New York.
The Australian Open has commenced on January 17 and will conclude on January 30. It will operate at full capacity because the state of Victoria relaxed COVID-19 restrictions after reaching a vaccination rate of 90%.