All Uruguayan league matches to be aired after Tenfield accord

The Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) and the Tenfield agency have reached a deal which will see every match from the country’s top flight broadcast for the remainder of the season.

The parties have reached an agreement, reports Uruguay’s La Republica newspaper, for matches to be broadcast on the agency’s linear pay-television channels VTV and VTV+ with others streamed on VTV’s website.

To accommodate the fixture pile-up, matches will be played on Wednesdays and Thursdays in addition to the traditional weekend fixtures.

The Uruguayan Apertura competition has finally been given the green light to return having been shut down on March 13 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, less than one month after it began in February.

As a result of this shutdown, the AUF and Tenfield reached an agreement for a UYU110m (€2.2m/$2.5m) rights-fee instalment to be paid over a four-month period between July and October. The bulk of that fee, thought to be 55 per cent, was expected to be paid this month.

The agency pays its rights fees in three UYU110m instalments annually on the last day of February, June and October. The agreement was reached to ease the financial pressures the agency was facing as a result of the pandemic’s effect on sports.

Tenfield is the long-term holder of Uruguayan club rights and its current agreement runs until 2025. Ahead of its deal to extend its rights to 2021, it was agreed that the contract would be paid in Uruguayan pesos as clubs feared a drop in the value of the US dollar.