The Champions League season is in full swing, with hundreds of millions of viewers tuning into Arsenal's humiliation in Munich and PSG's demolition of Barcelona.
There's a new three- year UK television rights contract which will be awarded next month. Sky and BT are once again in a huge battle for the main rights to Europe's top club competition But the Telegraph are reporting that Channel 4 are considering grabbing one match per week.
BT topped the auction last time with a bid of £897 million, a bid that took the Champions League off terrestrial television for the first time. The competition had previously been shown on ITV.
But according to the Telegraph's Ben Rumsby, BT's ratings haven't hit the dizzying heights that they expected. As such, there's a potential for a deal with Channel 4, who have recently lost the rights for horse racing to ITV and Formula 1 to Sky, meaning they may chave the money to throw around.
The paper reports that BT and Channel 4 have held discussions for the latter to take a game per week if the former can retain its main rights.
ITV could be interested in a similar deal. There are questions over whether they'd take the 'big' games off of BT if an agreement is reached.
This would sure to be a popular decision with the majority of the British public. Channel 4 won the rights to show all England and Scotland matches later in the summer at the Women's Euro 2017 and if the Telegraph are to be believed are interested in expanding their football coverage even further.
It's certainly an interesting one to watch over the course of the next month, and it would offer Irish viewers an alternative to RTE and TV3.
[The Telegraph]
