CBF hires Synergy Football to market Brazilian national team rights

The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) has engaged the Synergy Football agency in an advisory role to aid the sale of media rights to national team games.

The CBF is seeking to market the rights in Brazil for the period covering November 2017 through to the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar.

The Confederation said it has appointed Swiss-based Synergy after studying the “most modern practices” in the area of media rights sales, adding that the agency will assist it in the formation of a tender process.

CBF president Marco Polo Del Nero said: “CBF’s board of directors consulted with many specialist agencies, conducted an exhaustive interview and negotiation process, and opted for Synergy for its global experience and especially for its sales role in the Brazilian media, where it represented for a long time the main European championships, among them the (Uefa) Champions League. We are confident that this step will be significant for our national team and for Brazilian football.”

The move will end a period in which the CBF has taken an in-house approach to marketing its rights. In May, the governing body adopted a new means of broadcasting friendly matches played by its national team after electing not to award the rights to media group Globo.

Globo had held the rights to Brazil’s friendly games, but its deal expired at the end of 2016 and a new agreement was not reached. Brazil faced Argentina and Australia in friendly games in Melbourne on June 9 and June 13, respectively. 

The CBF elected to assign television rights for the games to public-service broadcaster TV Brasil and free-to-air network TV Cultura, while also live streaming the matches via its CBF TV platform.