Uruguayan Football Federation sets deadline for international rights bids

The Uruguayan Football Federation (AUF) has set a deadline of 4 September for the receipt of bids for international rights to the national team’s qualifying games for the 2022 World Cup.

The invitation to tender covers Uruguay’s nine home qualifying fixtures along with the home leg of a potential play-off match.

Along with multi-platform free-to-air and pay-television rights to Uruguay’s home qualifiers, the inventory on offer also includes static and virtual advertising rights during the broadcasts. The AUF has specified that it will reserve a section of the perimeter boards for its own sponsors.

The Tenfield agency held domestic and international media rights to Uruguay’s home qualifying matches for the 2018 World Cup in a deal worth around $18m (€16m). The agency assumed the international rights from Full Play, the previous rights owner, in 2015.

Full Play previously held the international rights to Uruguay’s nine home qualifying games for the 2018 World Cup, paying $6m. Under that agreement, Full Play, as the major distributor of World Cup qualifying games in the Conmebol zone, gave the AUF the broadcast rights in Uruguay to 81 qualifiers played elsewhere in South America. These rights were subsequently sold on by the national federation to Tenfield in a wider package for $12m.

In the absence of a wider agency agreement, the AUF has been selling rights to its home friendly games on a match-by-match basis.

Production and satellite uplink costs are to be covered by the federation, which will ensure a high-definition host broadcast with at least 12 cameras.

Rights offers must be submitted at the AUF headquarters in Montevideo by 6pm on 4 September.

The AUF’s broadcast rights committee last month decided to run the sale of domestic and international broadcast rights to the 2022 World Cup qualifying matches in two stages, with the sale of domestic rights to follow at a later date.

The 2022 World Cup qualifying process in South America begins in March next year and runs until November 2021.

Full details of the AUF’s ITT document can be found here.