Eurovision Sport, the sports arm of the European Broadcasting Union consortium of free-to-air broadcasters, has renewed a rights agreement with the Romania Ski Biathlon Federation (RSBF).
The new four-year deal has been signed ahead of the inaugural edition of the International Ski Federation’s (FIS) Men’s Ski Jumping World Cup in Rasnov, Romania, which takes place this weekend.
The agreement begins in 2021 and will run until March 31, 2024. The deal also covers commercial rights, which Eurovision Sport said are currently in development.
The deal also includes the annual FIS Women’s Ski Jumping World Cup event in Rasnov, as well as Summer Ski Jumping Grand Prix events and any future mixed ski jumping and FIS World Cup events that may be allocated to Romania in the future.
Broadcasters showing this weekend’s event in Rasnov include ORF (Austria), ARD (Germany), YLE (Finland), TVP (Poland), NRK (Norway), RTV Slovenija (Slovenia) and NBC/Olympic Channel in the US. TVP will show extended coverage, including qualification events, given the appetite for ski jumping in Poland.
Eurovision Sport executive director Stefan Kürten said: “The Romanian federation have proven that they can host great events and the upcoming men`s FIS ski jumping competition is the latest example of that. We are delighted to continue our successful cooperation and further develop ski sport in Rasnov with the RSBF.”
The deal with the RSBF has been signed after Eurovision Sport earlier this week renewed its long-running global media-rights deal with the International Biathlon Union. The initial four-season deal runs from 2022-23 to 2025-26 and includes the option of extending for a further four.
The deal includes rights to all annual World Cup events, as well as World Championships, the IBU Cup, Youth World Championships and European Championships. The EBU has held global rights to IBU events since 2002-03, with its current and most-recent deal running from 2018-19 to 2021-22.
Eurovision Sport also holds rights deals with the national ski associations of Austria and Switzerland.