Spring Media to distribute Portuguese Cup final international rights

The Spring Media agency has agreed a deal with the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) to sell international broadcast rights to the final of this season’s Taça de Portugal cup competition.

The match will take place between Benfica and FC Porto on August 1 at the Estádio Cidade de Coimbra.

Stockholm-based Spring Media will distribute rights outside of Portugal, where free-to-air Taça de Portugal rights are held by public-service broadcaster RTP and pay-television rights are held by Sport TV. Commercial broadcaster TVI will assume free-to-air rights from next season as part of a two-year deal signed with the FPF in October.

Tiago Craveiro, the FPF chief executive, said: “We want to promote Portuguese football and want that fans across the world fall in love with it. The Portuguese Cup Final is one of the most exciting, unpredictable and best quality exhibitions of our domestic game. Defining a clear promotion strategy and picking the best partners are fundamental steps to achieve our goals.”
Spring Media also held a rights distribution agreement with Belgium’s Pro League until the end of the 2019-20 season. Last year the agency helped facilitate deals with broadcasters in Italy, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, India, South Korea and the Middle East and North Africa.

In October, Spring Media also teamed up with UK-based media services company Red Bee to create an international OTT platform for women’s football called ‘Wnited’. A total of over 300 live matches and various video-on-demand content will be offered on the platform, which has been heralded as the world’s first global OTT service dedicated to women’s football.

Porto currently sits six points clear of Benfica with four matches of the Primeira Liga season remaining.