Norwegian commercial and pay-television broadcaster TV2 has acquired rights to the country’s Uefa European Qualifiers and Nations League matches, from 2022-23 to 2027-28, as well as the 2024 and 2028 European Championships.
It has agreed to sublicense selected matches from the Euro 2024 and Euro 2028 finals to public-service broadcaster NRK.
Along with the two editions of the European Championships finals, TV2 secured rights to at least 60 Norwegian national team matches over the 2022-28 period. These comprise the European qualifying matches for Euro 2024, Euro 2028 and the 2026 Fifa World Cup, the Nations League tournaments in 2022-23, 2024-25 and 2026-27 and centralised Norway friendly matches.
TV2 currently holds rights to Norway’s European qualifying matches, the Nations League and other friendly matches in a four-season deal, from 2018-19 to 2021-22.
The broadcaster also has rights to Euro 2020 – which will now take place in the summer of 2021 – of which it also sublicensed selected matches to NRK.
Uefa has mandated that all matches from Euro 2024 and 2028 must be available to a minimum of 80 per cent of all television households within the country.
CAA Eleven, which has recently renewed its exclusive sales agent mandate for national team rights with Uefa, is taking the international rights to market for six seasons as opposed to four, as exclusively reported by SportBusiness last month.
The agency chose Norway, along with the other Nordic territories of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, to issue the first invitations to tender. The first-round bid deadline was midday (CET) on August 26.
A separate but concurrent sales processes was carried out for the European Championship rights and the ‘Uefa National Team Football’ rights (Uefa Nations League, European Qualifiers, and friendly matches).
Broadcasters interested in acquiring rights to Euro 2028 as well as Euro 2024 were asked to lodge separate bids on a standalone basis.
Last week, Nordic Entertainment (Nent) Group, the Stockholm-based media group, was awarded rights in Sweden to the country’s qualifying and Nations League matches in the 2022-28 cycle.
Earlier this year, the English Premier League also chose the Nordic region in which to invite bids for rights across six seasons, from 2022-23 to 2027-28, and subsequently struck a deal with Nent.