TNT Sports, the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned pay-TV broadcaster, has secured exclusive rights in the UK and Ireland to the SailGP, while the Movistar Plus TV network will show the international sailing series in Spain.
The deals have been secured before the start of the 2024-25 season which gets underway in Dubai this weekend.
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Through the agreement with TNT Sports, the broadcaster will provide live coverage of all events this season on its TV channels and Discovery+ streaming platform. This will include the Great Britain Sail Grand Prix on July 19-20 – SailGP’s first event in the UK in three years.
In addition, SailGP and TNT Sports will work together to promote the championship and the Emirates Great Britain Team – co-owned by sailing legend Sir Ben Ainslie.
Rights to SailGP in the 2023-24 season were held in the UK by commercial broadcaster ITV.
Movistar Plus+ will also exclusively broadcast the entire competition, with races on both Saturday and Sunday in each round. The season-opening races in Dubai will be shown on Movistar's Deportes 3 channel.
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By GlobalDataThe broadcaster's coverage will also focus on the Spanish team which won the title last year.
SailGP was previously shown in Spain by public service broadcasters RTVE and TV3.
Earlier this week, the series added prominent Brazilian broadcaster Globo to its media partner stable for the upcoming season.
Globo joins BandSports, the sports-dedicated cable TV network, as a broadcast partner of SailGP in that market.
In a busy period, SailGP has also secured several major commercial deals recently, announcing tie-ups with the likes of Emirates, DP World, and Rolex.
The 2024-25 SailGP season will feature a record 14 races, four new locations – Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, and Auckland in New Zealand – and 11 teams.
The sailing league joins a premium TNT Sports rights portfolio that includes soccer’s UEFA Champions League and English Premier League, the UFC mixed martial arts promotion, motor racing’s Formula E, and the MotoGP premier motorcycling series – a deal recently renewed by the broadcaster.
TNT Sports has also, in terms of sailing rights, been showing the 2024 America's Cup competition from Barcelona, through a deal announced in August by WBD.
Elsewhere in sailing, WBD acted as host broadcaster and distribution partner for The Ocean Race, the round-the-world event, in 2023.
