GSP TV officials are understood to have been taken by surprise by RCS’s Spanish league deal, in which the cable operator outbid offers from a number of sports channels, including the present incumbent Boom, Telesport, SportKlub and Pro TV’s Sports.ro.
RCS is said to be paying at least €8 million overall for the three-year deal, from 2009-10 to 2011-12. The fee is some three times what Boom pays now.
GSP TV at present carries extensive coverage of the Romanian domestic league after an RCS-Antena consortium acquired the rights last year in an €85 million deal over three years.
But RCS is likely to show Spanish league coverage on a new sports channel, Digi Sport, and local observers believe that the new channel could also take over the domestic league coverage now shown on GSP TV.
Relations between RCS and Antena are said to be strained, with RCS unhappy about the Romanian league deal in which it pays the entirety of the rights fee while Antena pays only the production costs and shows the first-choice match each week on its free-to-air channel.