The International Ski Federation has awarded the television and marketing rights for the 2019 and 2021 World Ski Championships in the alpine and Nordic events to the Infront Sports & Media agency.
The agreement between the federation and Infront includes the distribution of worldwide media rights across all platforms and territories. The agency will also handle media production of the four events, whose hosts are yet to be determined.
The FIS had been holding talks with the European Broadcasting Union, the consortium of European public-service broadcasters, to renew its deal for the global media and marketing rights for the World Championships.
The EBU has a deal for the 2015 and 2017 championships and had an exclusive negotiation period which ran until the end of May.
However, the federation has elected to award the 2019 and 2021 rights to Infront, which has already collaborated with the FIS for the media rights distribution of the alpine and Nordic World Championships outside of Europe.
As a shareholder of FIS Marketing, the federation’s commercial arm, Infront is also involved in the marketing of FIS controlled rights to the World Cup competition.
Bruno Marty, executive director of winter sports at Infront, said: “Covering two global event highlights, the agreement marks a milestone in the continuous enhancement of Infront’s top-level winter sports portfolio.”
The FIS announced the award of the rights at its spring meeting in Cavtat-Dubrovnik, Croatia.