Mediaset España, the Spanish arm of the Italy-based broadcasting group, has acquired rights to the relaunched FIFA Intercontinental Cup club competition.
There will be notable interest in Spain as domestic soccer giants Real Madrid will feature in the final.
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The competition, for club teams from around the world, will have five matches, culminating in the final on December 18, for which the UEFA Champions League winners from Europe (last season, Real Madrid) automatically qualify.
The six-team tournament, to be staged in Qatar, has a new format, with teams competing in a series of regional play-off matches for annual confederation-based titles and trophies.
Announced in December last year, the competition replaces the traditional Club World Cup in terms of timings – a new version of the Club World Cup will now be played every four years, with 32 teams, from 2025.
Mediaset will air four matches on its Mitele subscription OTT platform. Its coverage began on Sunday as Asian Champions League winners Al-Ain (United Arab Emirates) beat Oceanic Champions League winners Auckland City (New Zealand) 6-2 in the African-Asian-Pacific Cup playoff.
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By GlobalDataAl-Ain will now face African Champions League winners Al Ahly in Cairo on October 29.
The action then switches to Doha, Qatar, where the 2024 South American Copa Libertadores winners will play Mexican side Pachuca, the winners of the Concacaf (North and Central America and the Caribbean) Champions Cup, on December 11 – a match dubbed by FIFA as the “Derby of the Americas”.
The winners of these two matches play each other in the Challenger Cup three days later to earn a spot in the Intercontinental Cup final against Real Madrid on December 18.
The final will also be broadcast on Telecinco, Mediaset’s free-to-air commercial channel.
England’s Manchester City are the current holders of the old Club World Cup having won the competition in 2023.
Real Madrid, meanwhile, are the most successful team in the tournament's history with five titles, the last of which came in 2022.
FIFA is still struggling to sell broadcast rights for the first edition of the revamped Club World Cup.
