Aljazeera Sport Channel Wins the UEFA Champions League Broadcasting Rights

After seasons and seasons of exclusively airing the UEFA Champions League, ART now loses those rights to Aljazeera Sport Channel. Aljazeera won those rights and for the UEFA cup for at least the next three seasons from 2009 to 2012. Aljazeera also got the rights to broadcast the UEFA Super Cups for 2009, 2010 and 2011.

What is really interesting also is that Aljazeera also got the rights to exploit those competitions on the Internet and Mobiles. It is said that Aljazeera will be selling some of he matches to free-to-air channels, those matches are expected to be in the UEFA Cup and not the UEFA Champions League.

At start there has been a few doubts on how Aljazeera Sports Channel will be able to manage to air big number of matches that play at the same time, as we know Aljazeera has now only two free-to-air channels and two “pay TV” channels, with an additional one to start soon, so to clear those doubts Aljazeera announced that they will be adding new channels that works only on matches times.

In my opinion Aljazeera Sports is better than ART, they respect the championships they have rights to, they create appropriate analysis studios they employ capable analysts and presenters. Simply speaking they are well organized, and willing to go all the way to produce high quality coverage.

In regard to ART Sports future it seems they are doomed, although some rumors say that they will be having the Italian League in FULL starting from next season, if there is any true to this it could save them but I really wish they don’t get it in full, Aljazeera is better capable to give this league the kind of attention it deserves. I really wish this Mary go around thing with the leagues ends, I wish one capable network takes all of them so we can just subscribe to one network.

Comments February 20th, 2008