Pay-television operator DirecTV has agreed rights deals with Peruvian Primera División football clubs Carlos Stein, Alianza Universidad de Huánuco, Deportivo Llacuabamba and Atlético Grau.
DirecTV will show domestic coverage of the four teams’ matches for the remainder of the season. Through the deal, DirecTV said that it will show 27 matches in total.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all Primera División matches are currently being played at neutral venues in Lima. DirecTV will show the teams’ assigned ‘home’ fixtures as part of the agreement, with coverage to also be made available through its DirecTV GO OTT streaming service.
In March, the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF) issued a warning to top-tier clubs over the sale of broadcast rights to their matches after it emerged that a clash between Deportivo Llacuabamba and UTC had aired on Movistar’s Gol Peru, the pay-television channel.
Llacuabamba’s home matches sat outside Gol’s existing rights agreement, which covers the majority of the 20 top-tier clubs. The FPF said in March that it had the “exclusive power to negotiate and assign all rights arising from the competitions it organises” but added that it could authorise a club such rights as an exception if it is “fully aware of the scope of the negotiations”.
However, the FPF gave the examples of Llacuamba, Atlético Grau, Alianza Universidad and Carlos Stein – the four clubs which DirecTV has this week finalised rights deals with with – as teams who could negotiate their own individual deals as long as they inform the federation.
Alianza Universidad played all of its home matches in 2019 without a broadcaster in place after it failed to agree a deal with Gol.