Brazilian Entertainment-led OTT platform Guigo TV is ready to challenge dominant media group Globo for the rights to Brazil’s away qualifiers for the 2022 Fifa World Cup, it has been claimed.
Guigo TV has consulted with the various football associations around South America and was informed that the matches would be packaged rather than sold on a match-by-match basis, reports Brazilian sports website UOL.
Guigo TV was launched in early 2019 and features entertainment content mostly though does have a carriage deal in place with World Wrestling Entertainment for its WWEXTREME channel. Its monthly subscription cost starts from R$20 (€3.51/$3.84) with further packages available for between R$8 and R$20.
The different national associations across South America have different agency deals in place. However, the Uruguayan Football Federation (AUF) is yet to sell its international rights for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
It is reported that Guigo would have to pay $2.5m per Brazil match for the nine matches Brazil is scheduled to play away from home. That would amount to a total of $22.5m with this pricing and market experts spoken to by SportBusiness said these figures were likely to be far in excess of their true value.
Guigo was also reportedly quoted $1m per match for South American World Cup qualifying matches not featuring Brazil.
The Brazilian National Team for a cornerstone of Globo’s sports strategy and, in 2017, agreed a sprawling rights deal with the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF) for 37 matches until 2022.
The deal included the rights to nine home World Cup qualifying matches to the 2018 World Cup which were sold as a mixture of exclusive free-to-air and pay-television, and non-exclusive digital rights.
Globo has already acquired the rights to the Fifa World Cup until 2030 after it completed a pair of two-tournament deals, covering the 2018/2022 and 2026/2030 iterations.