Sky TV grabs rights to 2018, 2022 World Cup soccer rights
Follows multi-year rugby, HBO and Disney deals.
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Sky TV [NZX: SKT] says it has stitched up exclusive rights to the 2018 and 2022 soccer World Cup tournaments (or the Fifa World Cup as most Europeans would call it).
The company refused to tell NBR ONLINE how much it had paid.
Sky, faced with increasing competition from streaming video on-demand services, has renewed a string of exclusive content deals recently, securing five-year rights to most All Blacks games, plus multi-year HBO and Disney deals covering both broadcast and online rights.
Not too much should be read into the deals. It's business as usual, First NZ Capital analyst Arie Dekker tells NBR. Sky TV has always sought three-to-five year deals. And, while Spark-owned Lightbox Sport has probably pushed up costs in some areas as it competes for content, the FIFA World Cup probably wasn't one of them.
"Lightbox Sport's business model still seems better suited to seasons than four-week events. It would have been hard for them to pay for it and simply add into their Premier League Pass product," he says.
Sky and Vodafone also announced today that they are expanding their marketing partnership. The pair's latest deal sees $10 a month off Sky Basic for Sky customers who sign on to one of 14 Vodafone broadband and phone plans for a 12-month term (Vodafone also has a promo deal with Netflix).
Sky is giving an analyst and investor briefing at 2pm this afternoon. The briefing is expected to offer more details on Sky's $120 million plan to upgrade decoders to support on-demand streaming video delivered over the internet.
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Sky TV grabs rights to 2018, 2022 World Cup soccer rights
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