Czech league goes to market with domestic media rights

The Ligové Fotbalové Asociace, the Czech league football association, has launched its domestic media rights tender for the next five-year cycle, covering the elite Fortuna Liga and second-tier Fortuna National League, as well as betting streaming rights to the top division.

An expression of interest phase has been launched by the LFA for the rights, which covers the 2024-25 to 2028-29 seasons.

Rights to the Fortuna Liga cover both the Czech Republic and neighbouring Slovakia, while the National League and betting streaming packages are only for the Czech Republic.

The LFA will go to market later in the year with its international broadcast rights. Its global data rights from 2022-23 to 2027-28 are currently held by IMG Arena under the centralised deal agreed by European Leagues.

The domestic tender is open to broadcasters as well as agencies.

The Pragosport agency holds global rights to the Fortuna Liga in a four-year deal to 2023-24, and sold the domestic rights onto pay-television broadcaster O2. The value of the current agreement can be read in this SportBusiness Media article.

The LFA said it plans to have two rounds of bidding – the initial deadline for bids to be submitted is 2pm (CET) on September 25, with second bids due 10 days later. However, the league reserves the right to close the process after the first round if the offers are deemed satisfactory.

For the Fortuna Liga, the broadcast rights are divided into three parts:

A: All eight matches per round exclusively
B: The top pick four matches per round (chosen by the winning broadcaster)
C: The remaining four matches each round
The LFA said it will select either option A or B and C.

At present, up to 13 cameras are used for top matches from the league. The LFA said it would like to see an increase in that number. The winning broadcaster(s) must also provide a VAR system for all matches, including the calibrated line technology for assessing offside situations.

For the National League rights, the winning bidder will have the right to stream matches but not for betting purposes. The LFA said it will retain the streaming rights to the National League unless they are exercised in the contract. The betting streaming rights can be acquired either exclusively or non-exclusively.

The competition conditions for individual competitions are available at www.lfafotbal.cz/tendr.

In 2021, O2 exercised a clause in its agreement with Pragosport to secure exclusive rights across the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.

In the first two years of the Pragosport contract, O2 sold on free-to-air rights to public broadcaster Česká Televize.

The last tender was the first to be handled by the LFA, which began managing the league’s commercial rights from 2018-19. Previous deals were brokered by Stes, the in-house marketing agency of the Czech Republic Football Association.