French commercial broadcaster TF1 has sublicensed from pay-television broadcaster beIN matches involving the national teams at handball’s men’s and women’s European Championships until 2024.
Under the deal, TF1 has non-exclusive free-to-air rights to up to five matches in each competition for the 2020, 2022 and 2024 editions.
The commercial broadcaster will show three group-stage French national team matches as well as the semi-finals and the final should the French team progress that far. Should France reach the final of the men’s or women’s tournament, then the match must also be shown on free-to-air television due to France’s listed events legislation.
The deal marks the first time that TF1 will broadcast matches from the men’s European Championships. The commercial broadcaster did show matches from the women’s 2018 tournament (also sublicensed from beIN).
BeIN will air all matches from the championships, having recently secured the rights. Florent Houzot, director of programming at beIN Sports France, recently announced the acquisition of the EHF Euro 2020 rights but it has now emerged that beIN’s new agreement runs up until the 2024 tournaments.
The sublicensing agreement is similar in structure to TF1 and beIN’s accord for the men and women’s IHF World Championships from 2019 to 2025. That agreement does not include the final of the tournaments as TF1 holds a separate deal with the Lagardère Sports agency in the case of French participation.
Ahead of the men’s 2018 EHF Euro, beIN sold on free-to-air rights to three games (a main-round game, semi-final and final) to M6, the commercial network.
The European Handball Federation’s 10-year media and marketing rights agreement with Infront and media company DAZN Group will soon kick in, but it excludes the 2020 EHF Euros given they were part of Infront’s previous agreement. The Infront-DAZN contract covers club and national team competitions and runs from 2020 to 2030.
The men’s EHF Euro 2020 will take place in Austria, Norway and Sweden from January 9 to 26. France have been drawn in Group E and will face Bosnia-Herzegovina, Norway and Portugal. The women’s tournament will be co-hosted by Denmark and Norway from December 3 to 20, 2020.