The Mediapro agency has agreed a 10-year deal to distribute media-rights for effectively all Canadian soccer, including home matches of the national team and the new Canadian Premier League.
In total the deal, struck with Canadian Soccer Business, covers global and domestic media rights for Canada Soccer’s men’s and women’s national team home matches, the CPL, the Canadian Championship and League1 Ontario, the third-tier semi-pro division the league acquired last year. The bulk of the value in the package lies in the first-party rights to national-team matches, with the women’s team more attractive to broadcasters than the men’s team.
Oscar Lopez, chief executive of Mediapro Canada, said: “Usually in Europe, the period that you can have the rights is three years. It’s not enough time to develop a product or a story. But here, it’s 10 years, and for us, this fits perfectly with our philosophy and our ideas.”
CSB was created in 2018 to handle commercial rights to both national team and club games. It ran an initial tender – advised on the process by US digital production company ThePostGame – with a deadline of September 14.
The Canadian Premier League will launch in April this year. It will be the first Tier 1 professional football league to be operated in the country. At present, seven teams are signed up but none of these have yet signed players.