Nova, the Central European pay-TV broadcaster, has retained rights to European club soccer’s top-tier UEFA Champions League (UCL) in the Czech Republic.
The broadcaster will cover up to six fixtures per match day from the expanded competition across the 2024-25 to 2026-27 cycle. In addition to live games, the tie-up with European soccer’s governing body UEFA also covers highlights clips online and on social media.
Games will be shown on the Nova Sport 3, 4, 5, and 6 channels.
For the 2021-22 to 2023-24 cycle (which ended with this season’s UCL final on June 1), Nova shared rights with pay-TV’s Premier Sport.
This deal comes with Nova having already snapped up rights to UEFA’s other pan-European club competitions - the second-tier Europa League and third-tier Conference League - for the next cycle.
It will share rights to these latter competitions with both AMC Networks and the CT Sport public-service broadcaster.
Dusan Mendel, head of sport at TV Nova, said: “The new Nova Sport 5 and 6 channels give us more space to broadcast a higher number of matches. Tuesday and Wednesday evenings will belong to the UEFA Champions League in an unprecedented quantity on our channels.
“We will broadcast up to six matches from each game day – two in the early evening and four in the evening simultaneously on Nova Sport 3 to 6.”
UEFA - alongside its Team Marketing club competition partner agency - launched the Czech Republic tender for media rights to its 2024-27 men’s club competition cycle in September 2022.
No teams from that country made it through to the main stage of the 2023-24 Champions League, with Sparta Prague and Slavia Prague to both enter in 2024-25 at the qualifying stage.
In terms of recent media rights deals for the next UCL cycle, late May saw Viaplay snap up rights in Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, while Bulgaria’s bTV renewed its deal covering the trio of competitions.
From next year, the UCL will comprise 203 matches per season across 19 match weeks, as opposed to 17 match weeks and 137 games in total currently. The Europa League and Conference League will also increase in size next year, with the match total up from 282 to 342.
Nova, meanwhile, also covers motor racing’s top-tier Formula 1 in the Czech Republic (and in Slovakia), through a deal struck late last year.
