Will the Champions League return to TVP? Sygut talks about public mission

Canal+ Polska acquired the exclusive rights to show Champions League football a few months ago. The contract covers the next three seasons. For the previous six years, the Champions League could be watched on Polsat Sport Premium channels and, before that, for more than a decade, on the N platform, which was absorbed by Canal+ in 2013.

For years, Polish television was able to broadcast one of Wednesday’s Champions League games and highlights from all of them under a sublicense. This cooperation ended in the middle of last year, when the contract with Telewizja Polsat expired. Selected matches from the Polish Ekstraklasa also disappeared from TVP channels.

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– The bidder made an exaggerated offer. It’s not about whether the Ekstraklasa is worth it or not. I would really like to have it on Polish television – Mateusz Matyszkowicz, then president of the public broadcaster, told Wirtualnemedia.pl in August last year.

TVP Director: Sport is the mission of public television

In the case of the Ekstraklasa, cooperation was resumed in July this year: Telewizja Polska signed a contract with Canal+ for three seasons, being able to broadcast one game from each round (on Saturday or Sunday at 5:30 pm) and highlights of the remaining ones.

Tomasz Sygut, general director of Telewizja Polska, emphasized in an interview with “Gazeta Wyborcza” that this the effect of difficult negotiations. – Only thanks to this policy were we able, among others: to acquire a sub-license for the Polish Ekstraklasa. I hope that the Champions League will also return to TVP soon – he said.

– As a result, we will have a phenomenal sports offer. For me, this is the mission of public television and an element of the fight against exclusion. Not everyone can afford to buy several paid sports platforms, Sygut noted.

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At the beginning of the current season, TVP began broadcasting matches of the 1st League, 2nd League and the Polish Cup Fortuna. According to the agreement signed last autumn with the Polish Football Federation, it also has the rights to show the Orlen Ekstraliga and the final of the Polish Cup Orlen for women’s football players, as well as matches of the Polish women’s national team, the men’s youth team and the national futsal team. The contract will be valid for three seasons. Previously, for many years, Fortuna 1. The Polish League and the Polish Cup were shown by Polsat Sport.

Europa League and Polsat Sport Conference

We should not expect Telewizja Polska to broadcast our teams’ matches in the group stages of the Conference League and Europa League, as in recent seasons. For the past three years, these matches have been available on the Viaplay streaming platform, with which the public broadcaster has reached a sublicensing agreement (in autumn 2021, it only broadcast Legia Warszawa’s home matches live).

Now, for the next three seasons, the broadcasting rights for the Conference League and the Europa League have been taken over by Telewizja Polsat. The broadcaster will broadcast the vast majority of games on pay-TV channels, but also offers many terrestrial channels, which will probably show games of Polish national teams. This is already the case for the qualifying rounds – as we reported, at the beginning of August football was broadcast for the first time on TV6. The remaining games of our teams were broadcast on Polsat and TV4.

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Jagiellonia Białystok (for the Europa League), as well as Wisła Kraków and Legia Warszawa (for the Conference League) advanced to the final qualifying rounds.