Desports pay $400 million for 3 seasons UEFA series

‍‍‍‍

After 3 rounds of bidding, Desports has won the exclusive media rights to UEFA competitions for the 2018-2021 seasons in mainland China. These include the Champions League, Europa League and Super Cup, as reported by Lanxiong Sports. This means a price of over 400 million dollars -- 10 times the current broadcast revenues of UEFA in China, although the figure has not been officially declared by Desports.

Desports have made some big deals in the past 2 years. In 2015, they acquired the exclusive media rights to the Spanish La Liga in mainland China, Taiwan and Macau for the following 5 years for PPTV, which is owned by Suning Group. On June 14, Jiang Lizhang personally bought 98.3% of the shares of the Granada Club from La Liga at a price of 37 million euros. Then on June 30, the American NBA officially announced that Jiang Lizhang had bought shares in the Minnesota Timberwolves, the first Chinese shareholder in the NBA.

Tencent Sports and Ssports were eliminated because of their low quotations. At the end of 2015, Ssports and Shankai Sports, a company related to IDG Capital Partners, jointly won the new media rights to the UEFA international series for the 2018-2022 seasons in mainland China. These include Euro 2020, the 2020 FIFA World Cup qualifiers for the European zone, and the upcoming UEFA Nations League. However, IDG-related companies failed to acquire the rights for the club series this time around.

Source：Lanxiong Sports

Proofread by Sean O Diobhilin