Tennis is set to return to Sky Sports in the UK from next year after the company locked in a substantial international broadcast deal, according to a report.
SportBusiness has quoted ‘multiple sources’ confirming that Sky will become the home of tennis from 2024 after signing a deal to show both ATP and WTA events. The deal isn’t just linked with the UK with agreements also made for their branches in Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. It is understood that in these six countries, Sky has signed a five-year deal where it will broadcast the sport between 2024-2028.
Exclusive rights have been granted to almost every ATP and WTA event as part of the contract. However, there are exemptions with some tournaments that sell their domestic rights separately to the ATP’s Tour rights package which is centralized by ATP Media. The same applies to certain WTA events. Although there is no official confirmation, it has been reported that these tournaments include Halle, Rome, Basel, Eastbourne, Queen’s, Hamburg and Vienna.
It is understood that Sky only signed one deal which included both the ATP and WTA. This was possible because DAZN approved the inclusion of WTA rights in the ATP’s ‘Europe-wide sales process.’ DAZN holds the WTA rights and acts as an agency which sells these to broadcasters.
Whilst a final decision is yet to be made regarding how Sky will broadcast the tennis events, they could create their own specific channel or even two channels to separate the WTA and ATP events. In the UK Sky already has designated channels for football, cricket, golf, F1 and NFL.
The development comes two months after it was confirmed that Sky had secured a five-year deal to show the US Open in the UK. Until now Amazon Prime had owned the rights. It is reported that Amazon didn’t make a bid to maintain its rights to show tennis in the UK and Ireland after this year.
No information so far has been issued regarding how people in the UK will be able to watch tennis. The price for Sky Sports is in the region of at least £30 per month depending on certain criteria (if a person is an existing Sky customer etc). They could go down the avenue of creating separate TV channel which fans can subscribe to which could work out cheaper for viewers. For example, Sky Sports F1 costs £15. Both of these possibilities are still more expensive than Prime which currently charges £8.99 per month or £95 annually.
Sky is yet to comment on the report and it is unknown when an official announcement will be made.
