Canal Plus, W9 to co-broadcast Women’s Champions League final

Pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus and free-to-air digital terrestrial channel W9 have acquired live rights in France to the Women’s Champions League final.

The fixture, which will be between Wolfsburg or Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain or Lyon, will be held on August 30.

The rights to the final were sold by Team Marketing, European football governing body Uefa’s exclusive sales agent for rights to its club competitions. Individual clubs are responsible for the sale of rights to their home leg in all earlier knockout rounds.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that the quarter-finals and semi-finals are one-legged affairs on neutral grounds this season, leaving the two involved clubs to jointly market the rights.

The rights in France to the PSG v Lyon semi-final, which takes place on Wednesday, have been acquired by Canal Plus and pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports.

Canal Plus will exclusively show the Wolfsburg v Barcelona semi-final today (Tuesday).

Lyon’s victory over Barcelona in last year’s Women’s Champions League final was broadcast in France by both Canal Plus and TMC, the TF1-owned free-to-air digital terrestrial channel. TMC attracted an average audience of 780,000 viewers (and 6.3-per-cent market share) for the match, along with a peak of 1.02 million viewers.

Uefa will centralise all media rights for the Women’s Champions League from the 2021-22 season onwards as part of a revamp of the competition that will see the creation of a 16-team group stage.