Pan-regional sports broadcaster Eurosport has renewed and enhanced a rights deal for the French Open tennis grand slam tournament.
The new agreement covers eight years, from 2014 until 2021. The first year of the deal has been renegotiated from an existing three-year deal, from 2012 to 2014, with the following seven years being a new agreement.
The deal grants Eurosport exclusive live pay-television rights across Europe and also comprises all media rights in 13 markets. Eurosport will have all media rights in Denmark, Hungary, Israel, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine from 2014, and Italy from 2015.
The agreement excludes the event’s home market, France.
Eurosport acquired the rights through the MP & Silva agency, which was acting on behalf of the Fédération Française de Tennis, the sport’s governing body in France and the operator of the clay-court tournament.
Eurosport said that it would continue to show coverage of the tournament on its main channel and Eurosport 2 as well as PC, mobile, tablet and connected-television platforms. The action will be available through Eurosport Player, Eurosport’s online television service, which provides multi-court coverage of the tournament.
“We have now taken it [the deal] to a whole new level, both in length, until 2021, and intensity, with additional rights,” Eurosport chief executive officer Jean-Thierry Augustin said. “I’m particularly delighted that we now hold full rights in Spain. Our live coverage of Roland Garros alone reaches more than 60 million viewers each year on Eurosport and Eurosport 2.”
Eurosport also has rights for two of the other three grand slam tournaments – the Australian Open, through to 2016, and the US Open, through to 2017.