An era came to an end as European soccer’s governing body UEFA announced it has entered exclusive negotiations with the Relevent Sports agency over commercial rights, during the 2027-33 cycle, to the lucrative and prestigious array of UEFA men’s club competitions.
This builds on the previous cycle where Relevent Sports took over commercial rights for the United States and North America in 2022, the first time TEAM’s stranglehold over UEFA’s commercial business interests had been broken and was perhaps an indicator as to the direction of travel.
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TEAM Marketing has been UEFA’s agency of record for over 30 years, coming into existence to market the new Champions League format back in 1992, and has been at the forefront of the commercialization of European football ever since.
The Champions League has become one of the most viewed sporting events in the world, with the final watched by an average audience of over 400 million globally. Compared to the NFL’s Super Bowl, the showpiece event for U.S. sports, the Champions League generates an audience four times larger, highlighting just how significant this event has become.
It is perhaps this comparison and the global attention that the Super Bowl generates that may give some greater insight into why UEFA has made this decision at this time.
While the Champions League final is a larger event in terms of TV audience, the Super Bowl generates a hype that no other event can match. Around the world, the event is previewed and analyzed, with the ‘Half Time Show’ a source of discussion and debate the world over.
Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and Beyonce have followed in the footsteps of Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Prince in recent years in providing a crossover between sport and entertainment, bringing eyeballs to the most watched U.S. sport.
With the growth in popularity of soccer in the U.S. specifically, the move to an agency with deeper roots in the territory does make logical sense. The coverage of the Champions League on Paramount+/CBS Sports is watched all over the world, with snippets from the show clipped on social media going viral the world over, while audiences have steadily grown in the U.S.
Viewing figures in the U.S. for the Champions League finals have been growing in interest and popularity. For 2021’s all-Premier League clash between Chelsea and Manchester City, 2.095 million people on average watched the game, while that grew to 2.761 million when Real Madrid beat Liverpool 1-0 in Paris in 2022.
European soccer is establishing roots in the United States and this latest move by UEFA is obviously a plan to capitalize on this. Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich have offices in the United States, the English Premier League has a Summer Series played in various U.S. cities while the Bundesliga and LaLiga also have a presence stateside – in fact, one of Relevent Sports’ main clients is LaLiga, which has been trying to break the U.S. market for a while. Much like the NFL, NBA, and MLB, the core domestic market is no longer the only market available to a sports league.
The work done by LaLiga is probably instructive when looking at the future for UEFA. LaLiga has been trying to have a competitive game played in the United States for years, while UEFA president Alexsander Ceferin has called the U.S. a ‘promising market for the future’ and suggested that it’s possible to play Champions League games in the United States starting in 2026.
Given the agreement with Relevent Sports doesn’t start until 2027, it might not come as quickly as that, but with the Club World Cup taking place in the United States in the summer of 2025, and the FIFA World Cup taking place across North America in 2026, UEFA switching teams now ahead of these events is a clear indication that the governing body for European football clearly sees its future in the United States.
UEFA has calculated that the risk of antagonizing its core audience in Europe for the riches on offer in the United States is worthwhile and has gambled on the new and the expanse of the known, and now Relevent must deliver. Only time will tell if the risk is worth the reward.
