Mega TV, a private television network in Greece, has retained a package of free-to-air broadcast rights to European soccer’s top-tier UEFA Champions League (UCL) for the 2024-25 to 2026-27 cycle.
Under the new three-year deal, the broadcaster will continue to show the top-pick game live each Wednesday from both the group stage and knockout stage of the elite club competition.
Mega also held UCL rights for the 2021-22 to 2023-24 cycle through a sub-licensing deal with Cosmote, the Greek pay-TV broadcaster which acquired rights to the competition (and other UEFA club competitions) for the three-year period.
As part of the deal struck between Cosmote and the Team Marketing agency, which handles UEFA’s commercial and broadcast rights sales, it was stipulated that one game each Wednesday in the three-year cycle would have to be shown on free-to-air TV.
Team went to market in Greece with a tender for the 2024-27 UEFA club rights in October 2023, with a deadline of December 5 set for bids.
In the 2018-19 to 2020-21 UEFA club competitions rights cycle, meanwhile, a similar package of free-to-air rights was allocated to ERT, the Greek public-service broadcaster.
As well as the live action, Mega, which relaunched as a channel in 2020 following its closure in 2018, will also show post-game highlights each Wednesday from all the games in the round of fixtures.
Mega’s new deal will begin on August 14 with its broadcast of the UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid and Atalanta, last season’s Champions League and Europa League winners.
Earlier this month, the Megogo streaming service retained rights to UEFA's club competitions for the next three-year cycle in Ukraine.
In other European markets, pay-TV broadcaster Nova recently snapped up rights in the Czech Republic, while Viaplay secured a deal for Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, and bTV renewed in Bulgaria. Elsewhere, Wowow also extended its deal in Japan.
UEFA opened the tender process for media rights in New Zealand. meanwhile, for the new cycle at the start of this month.
From the 2024-25 season, the Champions League will take on a new single-league format, with the competition expanding from 32 to 36 teams, and incorporating 189 matches instead of the current 125.
Last season, Piraeus-based Olympiakos won UEFA’s third-tier Europa Conference League to become the first Greek team to win a European trophy.
