Brazilian free-to-air commercial broadcaster SBT has acquired rights to the decisive second leg of the Campeonato Carioca football final between Flamengo and Fluminense.
The match at the Maracanã on Wednesday will be broadcast throughout Brazil, with SBT striking the deal with home team Flamengo.
The first leg of the final yesterday (Sunday) saw Flamengo take a 2-1 lead into the second match. In addition to the coverage on SBT, Flamengo said it will stream the second leg through its FlaTV platform for free across its channels on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
SBT will not pay a fixed rights fee but has instead reached an advertising profit share agreement with Flamengo, according to Brazilian sports news portal UOL.
The deal marks a rare outing for live football on SBT. In November 2017, SBT acquired rights to the Copa do Nordeste, an annual football competition contested by clubs in the Northeastern region of the country. SBT agreed the deal with sports broadcaster and rights-holder Esporte Interativo.
Earlier this month, commercial broadcaster Globo was ordered to honour its contract for the Carioca by the Rio de Janeiro district court following an injunction being filed by the rights-holder.
Globo aired the semi-final match between Fluminense and Botafogo after having previously announced that it was cancelling its contract for the property. A late injunction was filed by the Rio de Janeiro Football Federation to the court on the basis that the broadcast arrangement was still live for this season.
The rights dispute has been increasingly fractious and took another step when the media group announced that it would be cancelling its contract with the rights-holder.
Globo’s position has remained a constant and that has been that it views the government’s recent provisional decree as a violation of its contract with the Carioca Championship. The media-rights decree introduced by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro places a club’s media rights in its own hands in the event that it does not hold a broadcast deal.