European cups: Altice, BT Sport, and MTG are first groups to acquire the 2018-2021 TV rights

"The amount of the acquisition corresponds to a market, that of the best of football, with the largest audiences and nearly 350 matches, so this is a major asset that justifies this spending," said Michel Combes, CEO of Altice, the Dutch holding company of telecom and pay-TV operators, who acquired, for an estimated €350m per season (2.2 times more than rights in France for the previous cycle), the full and exclusive TV rights, in France, to the 2018-2021 cycle of the Champions League (€315m) and the Europa League (€35m), on 11/05/2017.

"We see this inflation everywhere in Europe given the attractiveness of these assets that we need to have," added Michel Combes, referring in particular to the United Kingdom, the first European country where the 2018-2021 TV rights were granted, to BT Sport, on 06/03/2017. The UK telecom and pay-TV group has extended its exclusive rights to the two European cups for an estimated £394m per year (about €455m) over the 2018-2021 period, an increase of 31.8% compared with the 2015 -2018 cycle (£299m per year, or around €360m at the time).

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