TNT Sports, the pay-television sports broadcaster owned by US media giant Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), will continue to show European soccer’s top-tier UEFA Champions League (UCL) competition in Brazil after securing a rights renewal for another three years.
During its live broadcast of Spanish giants Real Madrid’s UCL clash against Italy’s Napoli last night (November 29), TNT Sports announced it had retained rights to air live coverage of all games in the competition in Brazil from the 2024-25 to 2026-27 seasons.
WBD has held rights in the country to the UCL since the 2015-16 season and last renewed its agreement in March 2021 covering the 2021-22 to 2023-24 cycle. The new deal will mean the media giant will have shown the competition for at least 12 consecutive seasons by the end of the contract.
During the last cycle, TNT Sports shared rights with SBT, with the commercial broadcaster airing 15 matches per season, one per round from the group stage through to the final, with a choice of Tuesday and Wednesday games.
SBT has also retained similar rights for the next cycle.
UEFA launched the tender for the next period of club competition rights in Brazil on February 22, with a bid submission deadline of March 21.
Rights sales for the UCL are being handled by Team Marketing, UEFA’s partner agency for media and commercial rights sales across its club competitions.
Contracts have already been signed across the continent in major markets such as the UK, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.
Outside of Europe, deals have been agreed in the US and Australia.
The UCL’s current format will be altered substantially for 2024-25, taking on a new single-league structure instead of being split into multiple groups from which teams qualify for the knockout stage. The competition will expand from 32 to 36 teams and will incorporate 189 matches instead of the current 125.
Earlier this week, UEFA opened a tender process for its club competitions - the UCL, the second-tier Europa League, and the third-tier Europa Conference League - in sub-Saharan Africa.
That process has a bid deadline of December 11.
