Saran Media, the Turkish media-rights agency, has extended its contract for the rights to tennis Grand Slam tournament Wimbledon for a further two years in a deal covering 13 territories.
The new contract spans the 2020 and 2021 editions and includes the exclusive live, delayed and highlights rights in Turkey, the Baltic trio of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, plus the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Saran’s agreement is rounded off by the rights in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Georgia.
Saran will be able to exploit the rights across television, online and mobile platforms, and will take its relationship with the All England Law Tennis Club into a 16th year having first bought the tournament’s rights in 2005.
Saran has sublicensed the Turkish and Eurasian rights to broadcasters. The agency has steadily been growing the number of territories covered in its Wimbledon deals, increasing from nine in the 2015 arrangement to 13 in this iteration.
During the 2017-19 cycle, pan-European sports broadcaster Eurosport completed its coverage of tennis’s four Grand Slam properties across Turkey and Central Asia. Saran had launched its own sports channel in Turkey – S Sport – shortly before the Eurosport sublicense deal but chose not to retain the rights at that time.
BeIN-owned pay-television broadcaster Digiturk bought the sublicensed rights in Turkey during the previous cycle (covering the 2014, 2015 and 2016 tournaments).
Eurosport broadcast the 2019 event in 12 of the 13 territories covered by the new Saran agreement, with Belarus the only country in which it did not holds rights (Belarus 5, the public-service sports channel, was the rights-holder).
Mick Desmond, commercial and media director at the AELTC, said of the new deal: “We are pleased to have extended our partnership with Saran Media for a further two years through 2021, which will see coverage of The Championships, Wimbledon, broadcast on multiple platforms in 13 countries throughout the region.”