Saran Media Group, the Istanbul-based media-rights agency, has acquired rights in Turkey to club and national team competitions organised by the European Volleyball Confederation (CEV).
The five-year deal runs until the end of the 2024-25 season and covers CEV’s men’s and women’s Champions League, CEV Cup and CEV Challenge Cup club tournaments.
National team tournaments covered by the deal include EuroVolley, CEV beach events, European Volleyball Leagues, the Snow Volleyball European Championship, Olympic qualification events and CEV European qualifiers.
Saran will hold exclusive live, delayed, highlights and clips rights across TV, online and mobile platforms.
The Saran-owned S Sport, S Sport2 and S Sport Plus channels already hold rights to selected CEV beach volleyball events and the International Volleyball Federation’s (FIVB) Volleyball Nations League.
Rights to CEV’s club and national team competitions are sold by the Infront agency, which in March finalised a 12-year global media-rights and production agreement with the body understood to be worth €106m ($124m).
The deal was first announced at the end of last year and runs until 2032. Infront was the CEV’s incumbent agency for the distribution of media rights to national team tournaments but took over from sports data and content agency Sportradar in commercialising the media rights to its club competitions from 2020-21 onwards.
The €106m total represents an average of €8.8m per year in “guaranteed payments and the provision of comprehensive media, production and digital services by Infront”. It is understood to be broken down as follows:
- €70m in cash payments
- €27m in production and digital value-in-kind services provided by Infront
- €9m ascribed to the Infront volleyball team cost and coverage