Polish public-service broadcaster TVP has agreed a sublicensing deal with pay-television broadcaster NC Plus that ensures the Ekstraklasa, the country’s top-tier football league, will receive free-to-air exposure for the remainder of the 2018-19 season.
TVP will broadcast one match from each of the remaining 11 rounds of the 2018-19 season, beginning with Wisła Kraków v Legia Warsaw on Sunday. The matches will be broadcast on TVP1, TVP2, TVP3 or TVP Sport, streamed at tvpsport.pl and vod.tvp.pl and via mobile applications TVP Sport and TVP VOD. Under an agreement with the Ekstraklasa, TVP has broadcast a match from the final round of the season for the past four years.
The agreement will bring an early start to the rights model employed by the league for the forthcoming two seasons. The Ekstraklasa agreed in December deals for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 campaigns with TVP and pay-television broadcaster NC Plus. NC Plus acquired rights to all 296 matches per season, while TVP secured a package of 37 matches representing one game per round to be broadcast on Saturday or Sunday.
Commenting on the new agreement, TVP president Jacek Kurski said: “I promised that if Telewizja Polska [TVP] received compensation for persons legally exempt from paying the subscription, the broadcast of one match from each round of the current season will be present on the antennas of Telewizja Polska, available to everyone. I kept my word.”
Ekstraklasa president Marcin Animucki revealed that the league had first proposed a sublicensing agreement to NC Plus a few months ago. He added: “This is a great promotion for the league, which will surely translate into an increase in viewership of games and benefits for clubs.”