Japanese satellite TV network Wowow has struck a last-minute media rights deal covering the upcoming UEFA men’s European Championship national team soccer tournament.
Over the weekend, a tie-up was unveiled between the CAA Eleven UEFA partner agency and Wowow. The 24-team tournament will take place across 10 German venues between June 14 and July 14, with this agreement having been struck just in time.
Wowow will broadcast all 51 tournament matches for a Japanese audience, with this deal representing an extension - Wowow has covered all editions of the Euros live since the turn of the century.
This concludes UEFA’s rights sales process for the tournament in major markets and follows BeIN snapping up rights in France.
For the previous men’s Euros, which took place across the continent in 2021, subscribers to the 'Wowow Members on Demand' service also received on-demand access to every match upon its completion.
For Euro 2024, the games - because of the time difference - will air in Japan mostly in the late evening or the early hours of the morning.
In late April, Wowow unveiled the retention of rights to broadcast European club soccer’s elite UEFA Champions League, as well as its second-tier UEFA Europa League and third-tier UEFA Conference League, for the 2024-25 season.
Wowow will serve as the exclusive broadcaster and distributor of the Champions League in Japan for the upcoming season, and will also exclusively air select fixtures from the lower-tier competitions and the UCL’s youth category, the UEFA Youth League.
Aside from soccer, Wowow holds rights to rugby union’s Super Rugby Pacific competition, golf’s Ladies PGA Tour, basketball’s NBA, tennis’ ATP Tour, and several high-profile boxing cards booked by the likes of promoter Top Rank.
Elsewhere, in terms of Euros rights, German multi-channel free-to-air (FTA) network Sport1 will show highlights from the tournament domestically through a sub-licensing deal with main rights-holder Deutsche Telekom, it was announced yesterday (June 10).
Sport1 will provide free highlights from all 51 games on its digital and social media platforms, right after the final whistle of each fixture. In addition, ad-hoc clips from “special scenes and statements” will be shown.
In terms of live domestic coverage of the Euros, German fans will be able to watch games through Deutsche Telekom, which snapped up rights to all games in October 2019, or through FTA networks ARD, ZDF, and RTL.
That trio unveiled sub-licensing tie-ups with Deutsche Telekom in early 2021.
Deutsche Telekom had sprung a surprise by landing exclusive Euro 2024 rights, displacing long-term rights-holders ARD and ZDF.
The company will show all 51 Euro 2024 matches on MagentaTV, its subscription over-the-top streaming product.
