Pay-television broadcaster Premier Sports has acquired non-exclusive rights in the UK and Ireland to football’s Spanish LaLiga.
Coverage will begin this weekend, with Premier Sports to air four games per round across Premier Sports 1 and 2 via Sky, Virgin and the Premier Player online.
Premier Sports’ coverage will also include the weekly magazine shows LaLiga World and the LaLiga Show, as well as a weekly highlights show.
The length of the agreement was not disclosed.
The deal comes after Premier Sports last month picked up rights to the Italian Serie A after international sports broadcaster Eleven Sports announced its UK coverage of the competition, as well as the Dutch Eredivisie, would cease at the end of February.
Premier Sports has been sharing Serie A coverage with Eleven Sports throughout February and will take on exclusive rights from March 1.
Eleven Sports also holds rights to LaLiga, which last until 2021 and were originally exclusive.
The company told SportBusiness Media that it is happy to continue broadcasting LaLiga in the UK on a non-exclusive basis. It said that a shift to non-exclusivity was “something anticipated” in the contract renegotiations it held in December with LaLiga on the back of the financial difficulties Eleven Sports was experiencing with its UK business.
At the time of the loss of the Serie A and Eredivisie rights, Eleven Sports had claimed it would continue to show exclusive coverage of LaLiga until the end of the 2018-19 season following negotiations with the league.
Eleven Sports will still show up to 10 games per week from LaLiga despite losing exclusivity.