Movistar, the Spanish pay-television operator owned by telecoms giant Telefónica, has secured rights to air the US Open grand slam tennis tournament in Spain.
Under the deal, Movistar will supply coverage of this year’s edition, running from August 28 to September 10, with Movistar Plus+ customers able to access all games live for €14.
The US Open completes Movistar’s grand slam rights portfolio which also includes the Australian Open, French Open, and Wimbledon Championships.
The pay-TV operator also holds rights to all men’s ATP Masters 1000, ATP 500 events, and Davis Cup matches, as well as select ATP 250 tournaments.
Movistar succeeds Warner Bros. Discovery’s Eurosport channel, which agreed a five-year rights extension to show the tournament in 45 markets across Europe, excluding the UK and Ireland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia.
WBD’s deal covers all matches during the tournament, which will be aired across all Eurosport platforms, including linear channels Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2, as well as the Eurosport app and eurosport.fr website.
In a separate deal, WBD then secured rights to the tournament in France.
Global rights to the US Open are distributed by international sports and marketing agency IMG and this latest deal adds to the tournament’s recent rights activity in Europe.
Last month, Sportdeutschland.TV secured rights to the New York-based grand slam across the DACH region in a four-year deal, while in March SuperTennis, the free-to-air channel owned by the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation, acquired exclusive rights in Italy.
In December, pay TV's Sky announced a five-year deal to show the tournament in the UK and Ireland from the 2023 edition. The rights were previously held by e-commerce giant Amazon for the 2018 to 2022 cycle.
Domestic rights, meanwhile, are held by Disney-owned international sports broadcaster ESPN in an 11-year deal agreed with the USTA in 2013 worth $770 million.
Last year’s edition set a new all-time attendance record across the tournament, with a total of 776,120 fans visiting the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York during the main draw to surpass the previous record of 737,872 set in 2019.
Movistar’s new rights deal, meanwhile, comes a day after it was announced the broadcaster had retained exclusive rights in Spain to air all European soccer’s club competitions for the 2024-27 cycle. That deal will see it broadcast top-tier Champions League matches, as well as second-tier Europa League and third-tier Europa Conference League fixtures starting from the 2024-25 season in a deal worth €960 million in total, or €320 million per season.
Last month, Movistar relaunched its OTT streaming television service Movistar Plus to group its sports and entertainment content on one platform. Along with UEFA rights, other soccer rights include Spain’s top-tier LaLiga and second-tier LaLiga 2, the Spanish Super Cup, the German Bundesliga, and the Italian Serie A.
Other sports, meanwhile, include domestic basketball’s Liga ACB, North America’s NBA and NFL Super Bowl, rugby union’s Six Nations, and tennis’ Wimbledon grand slam and ATP Masters 1000 events.
Image: Julian Finney/Getty Images
