MTG renews Scandi soccer deal

Sweden’s Modern Times Group (MTG) has extended its deal to broadcast English Premier League football in Scandinavia until 2016.

The new agreement will allow MTG to continue showing Premiership football from the start of the 2013/14 season until the end of the 2015/16 campaign in Sweden and Denmark.

MTG’s rights are exclusive on all platforms in Sweden, while in Denmark, 280 of the 380 Premiership matches will air exclusively on MTG and the remaining 100 games are non-exclusive.

MTG will air matches on its Viasat pay-TV sports channels in Sweden and free-TV channel TV3 in Denmark, with both also airing highlights and analysis shows.

The Premier League is currently embarking on the latest auction of its rights for 2013 to 2016. The last set of broadcasting rights raised £1bn (US$1.6bn) for the league from BSkyB for the UK broadcast rights alone.

This time around Qatar-based Al Jazeera is expected to rival Sky and ESPN for certain UK rights, but the price paid is being keenly watched by analysts, following a ruling in the European Court that the matches themselves cannot be copyrighted.

MTG also holds English Premier League broadcasting rights in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria.