Canal Plus nets English Premier League rights in Vietnam

Pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus has acquired two packages of rights in Vietnam for the English Premier League, the top division of football in England, in a deal with the IMG agency.

The agreements will run for three years, from 2013-14 to 2015-16.

Canal Plus has secured exclusive live rights for all Sunday matches and all 32 Saturday lunchtime games. On weekends where there are no Saturday lunchtime games, the broadcaster will have the first pick of the remaining matches later in the day. Canal Plus will also have the first pick for exclusive live coverage of midweek matches.

In addition, Canal Plus will have non-exclusive rights to all other Saturday, Monday and midweek matches and access to supplementary programming such as preview and review shows, the Premier League World magazine programme and the 24/7 Premier League Content service, which are all produced by the IMG Sports Media division.

“This was a very competitive process with a variety of interesting offers from broadcasters for the top two packages and we are delighted that Canal Plus will continue to have live coverage of the Premier League,” Chris Guinness, senior vice-president and head of IMG Media in the Asia-Pacific region, said. “We will continue discussions with all of the other Vietnamese broadcasters regarding the remaining package consisting of over 250 matches per season including non-exclusive Saturday matches (excluding the early kick off), Monday matches and selected mid-week matches, and work towards concluding deals to ensure that they can still continue to show the Premier League to their viewers.”