Paramount wins Champions League broadcast rights in UK and Ireland – The Athletic – The New York Times

UCL
Kristian Skeie – UEFA
Paramount+ has won the rights to broadcast the majority of Champions League games in the United Kingdom from 2027 to 2031, with Sky Sports winning the rights to broadcast Europa League and Conference League matches from the 2027/28 season.
Owned by American entertainment and media conglomerate Paramount Skydance, Paramount+ has also been named as the preferred bidder for the main packages in Germany, with Amazon Prime Video keeping its Champions League packages of first picks in Germany, Italy and the UK. Amazon’s games will remain on Tuesday nights in the UK but move to Wednesdays in Germany and Italy.
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Sky Sports has not shown European football since 2015, when it last broadcast the Champions League, but will now be the UK home of the UEFA’s second and third-tier competitions.
Paramount and Sky’s wins comes at the expense of TNT Sports, which has been the primary home of UEFA club football in the UK and Ireland since 2013, first as BT Sport and then as TNT following a rebrand in 2023.
Having paid £1billion for the current three-year cycle from 2024 to 2027, TNT tried to defend its position but was blown away by Paramount’s financial firepower.
Led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Paramount has been trying to aggressively reposition itself as modern content and streaming business to rival Disney and Netflix. Premium sport is a central part of this strategy and it has had the U.S. rights to the Champions League since 2019. In fact, its coverage of the competition has become a hit beyond America’s shores, thanks to the social media-friendly camaraderie of presenting team Kate Abdo, Jamie Carragher, Thierry Henry and Micah Richards.
There is a twist to the TNT/Paramount tussle, though, as Paramount Skydance is in talks to buy TNT’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in a deal that could unite the Hollywood studios of Paramount and Warners Brothers, American channels CBS, CNN and HBO, and dozens of other networks and streaming platforms around the world, including British free-to-air channel 5.
That deal is far from done, though, as there are numerous regulatory hurdles to clear, not to mention rival interest in the WBD assets from Comcast and Netflix. But with the Ellison family’s billions and close links to U.S. President Donald Trump, Paramount is in the box seat.
While that story is dominating conversations in U.S. media and political circles, the headline for British football fans is that they will need to subscribe to a new streaming service if they want to watch Champions League football from 2027, and three different subscriptions to watch all three competitions.
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Paramount picked these rights up in the first auction run by UC3, the joint venture between UEFA and the European Football Clubs, the new name for the European Club Association, and its new agency Relevent Football Partners, which replaced UEFA’s long-term sales partner TEAM Marketing in 2024.
That brought an end to a relationship that had made TEAM, UEFA and every participant in UEFA’s club competitions a lot of money, but, following the failed European Super League breakaway in 2021, the big clubs decided they wanted a bigger say in how those competitions are run and marketed.
Relevent, which is owned by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, promised UC3 it would boost its annual revenues from today’s €4.4billion (£3.9billion) to €5billion (£4.4billion) in 2027, with a longer-term target of €6.5billion (£5.7billion) by 2031.
To do achieve this, UC3 and Relevent, with European Commission backing, decided to add a year to the usual three-year rights cycle, giving bidders more certainty and games, and started the process with simultaneous tenders in Europe’s five biggest markets: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
It also encouraged bidders to make bids in multiple markets and even carved out an exclusive rights package for a small number of games that was intended to attract bids from a global streamer like Apple, Netflix or YouTube.
Sources close to the process, speaking anonymously as they have not been given permission to discuss this publicly, said bids did come in for the global package but they were not high enough to compensate for the reduced offers that the likes of Paramount and Amazon would make for the territorial deals.
That said, these auctions were highly competitive, with second rounds required in all five markets.
Canal+ was the big winner in France, scooping exclusive rights to all the matches.
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In an email to staff, which The Athletic has seen, Canal+ chief executive Maxime Saada said: “Today, we are demonstrating once again that our sporting offering is the very best in the world. We can all be proud of this.”
The mood will not be so positive at TNT Sports, which despite still holding rights to Saturday’s early Premier League game, Prem Rugby and The Ashes, is now short of top-notch content.
In a statement, a TNT Sports spokesperson said: “Ultimately we remained committed to the approach that made financial sense for our business, and our customers.”
Amazon, Paramount, Relevent and UC3 all declined to comment.
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Based in North West England, Matt Slater is a senior football news reporter for The Athletic UK. Before that, he spent 16 years with the BBC and then three years as chief sports reporter for the UK/Ireland’s main news agency, PA. Follow Matt on Twitter @mjshrimper

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