Modern Times Group, the international broadcasting group, has today secured the media rights in Sweden, Denmark and Norway to the men’s and women’s handball European Championships in 2016 and 2018.
The deal with Infront Sports & Media, the Switzerland-based international sports marketing agency that is the media and marketing partner of the European Handball Federation for its biennial flagship national team events, includes qualification games for both tournaments, as well as those for EHF Euro 2014.
A tender for the rights was launched by Infront in March.
Games will be broadcast in Scandinavia on MTG’s free-to-air television and pay-television channels and on the Viaplay online pay-television service. As part of the agreement, games involving the local national teams, as well as the semi-finals and finals will be shown on free-to-air channels.
In addition, there will be comprehensive studio programmes and daily highlights shows.
Last weekend, the 2016 Men’s EHF European Championship was awarded to Poland, which beat Croatia and Norway in a vote of EHF members, while the women's tournament went to Sweden, which was unopposed after Turkey withdrew its candidacy.
The 2018 event calendar and bidding process has yet to be announced.
Hans-Holger Albrecht, president and chief executive of MTG, said: "We are delighted to have secured these rights and will make high quality coverage of the European Championships broadly available to our viewers. This is further evidence of our commitment to provide viewers with the very best sports content on multiple channels and platforms."
Michael Wiederer, EHF secretary general, added: "We are confident that the coverage across the MTG free-to-air network of the Men’s and Women’s EHF EURO events will attract high audience ratings, reaching millions of handball fans across Scandinavia."
Stephan Herth, executive director of summer sports at Infront, said that as the deal covers three core territories for handball, it "holds significant value for the future development of the sport in Europe."
Sportcal