The tender for UEFA men’s club competition media rights in New Zealand for the 2024-27 cycle is now underway, it has been unveiled.

European soccer’s governing body UEFA began a tender process in that market for rights to the top-tier Champions League (UCL), second-tier Europa League, and third-tier Conference League, on May 28, with a deadline for bid submissions of July 9. The rights allocated will cover the 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 seasons.

The tender has been launched by UEFA alongside Team Marketing, the Swiss body’s agency partner for club competitions.

For 2023-24 (which concluded over the weekend with the showpiece UCL final), that trio of competitions were shown in New Zealand by BeIN Sports, through a one-year tie-up. Rights for the 2021-24 cycle had originally been allocated to Spark, but that network sub-licensed them to BeIN last August.

Indeed, Spark then shut down its sport streaming service midway through last year.

Before that, pay-TV's Sky NZ had covered the 2018-21 cycle.

In terms of recent UEFA club competitions rights deals for 2024-27, last week pay-TV broadcaster Nova snapped up rights in the Czech Republic, while late May saw Viaplay do the same in Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland.

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.

In New Zealand, meanwhile, the UEFA men’s national team European Championships are set to be covered by public-service broadcaster TVNZ.