Norwegian basic-tier broadcaster TV Norge has purchased rights for all five of the Norway national football team’s away qualifying games for the 2014 Fifa World Cup.
The rights will be exploited on TV Norge’s pay-television channel Max.
The deal was struck with the Sportfive agency in time for Max to broadcast tonight’s game away to Iceland.
The website added that Harald Strømme, the head of TV Norge, refused to comment on speculation that telecommunications company Telenor had helped to fund the rights acquisition to prevent the games from being snapped up by basic-tier and pay-television broadcaster TV2. Telenor was reported to have been concerned that TV2 might put the matches on TV2 Zebra, a channel which is not available on the telco’s pay-television platform Canal Digital.
Strømme said that TV Norge had decided to show the games on Max, rather than the broadcaster’s main channel, which has a larger audience reach, in order to develop the brand of the smaller channel.
“Max is our football channel – that’s where we have the [English] Premier League and the [Spanish] Liga,” he said. “We have a multi-channel strategy so we can build distinct brands with slightly different directions. It is about adding to Max and the long-term strategy is to make it more important.”
Kampanje reported that no Norwegian broadcaster had been willing to meet Sportfive’s initial asking price of €1 million ($1.26 million) per game. Public-service broadcaster NRK and TV2 were reported to have made a failed joint bid worth €500,000 per match.