The apex body of football in Europe, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has announced the tender for men’s club competition media rights in New Zealand for the 2024–27 cycle.
The top-tier UEFA Champions League (UCL), second-tier UEFA Europa League, and third-tier UEFA Europa Conference League rights are up for grabs in that market. The UEFA launched a tender process and deadlined bid submissions for July 9 and the seasons 2024–2025, 2025–2026, and 2026–2027 will be covered by the rights allotted.
UEFA and Team Marketing, the Swiss organization’s agency partner for club competitions, have jointly launched the tender.
During 2023–24, BeIN Sports aired all three competitions in New Zealand as part of a one-year tie-up, which came to an end this past weekend with the UCL final. Originally granted to Spark, the rights for the 2021–24 cycle were sublicensed to BeIN by that network in August of last year.
However, midway through the previous year, Spark closed its sports streaming service. Prior to that, the 2018–21 cycle was covered by pay-TV’s Sky NZ.
Regarding current rights deals for the UEFA club competitions for 2024–2027, pay-TV broadcaster Nova acquired rights in the Czech Republic last week, and Viaplay did the same in Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland in late May.
The UCL will have 19 match weeks and 203 games per season starting next year, instead of the current 17 match weeks and 137 games total. Next year, there will be more matches in the Conference League and Europa League, increasing their combined total from 282 to 342.