Tennis fans often missed matches on beIN, among them the return of Maria Sharapova in April 2017.Getty Images
The Tennis Channel was set to announce on Oct. 1 that it has acquired the U.S. rights to 46 overseas WTA tournaments. Amazon, which has become more prominent in sports broadcasting, made a push to acquire those rights but ultimately decided against submitting a bid. The Tennis Channel’s five-year deal is scheduled to start in January 2019.
The 46 overseas events are currently held by beIN Sports, which has struggled to show all of them when they conflicted with the channel’s high-profile soccer offerings.
“ESPN and Amazon both expressed a strong level of interest in the rights,” WTA CEO Steve Simon wrote in an email. “ESPN did submit a bid. Amazon did not.”
Amazon has shown a growing interest in sports, whether by signing deals for the NFL’s Thursday night package, or streaming the U.S. Open in the U.K. The company did not reply for comment on its interest in the WTA events and why it did not submit a bid.
BeIN acquired the rights in 2017 from Perform, which had acquired WTA overseas media rights in a 10-year, $500 million deal. Perform sold the U.S. rights to the WTA’s non-U.S. events to beIN, which resulted in some high-profile WTA matches — like Maria Sharapova’s’ comeback from a doping ban in April 2017 — not being shown on TV because the Qatar-based broadcaster chose to air soccer and other sports instead.
To execute the Tennis Channel deal, the WTA, Perform and beIN agreed to carve out the U.S. rights and resell them.
Tennis Channel CEO Ken Solomon declined to comment on what his channel paid for the rights but said it was commensurate with the value he would have paid for ATP events.
“Everyone relatively speaking is going to be made whole,” Solomon said. “Look, the values for the rights have gone up, considerably. The amount of content has gone up considerably. Our ability to maximize has changed.”
The rise of OTT changed the dynamic, Solomon said. With more courts available for coverage, whether it’s Tennis Channel’s OTT offering or ESPN3, these outlets can pay more for a sport like tennis because of the growing content distribution afforded by streaming multiple courts, Solomon said.
Certainly, the deal gives the WTA better exposure. In September BeIN was in 21.6 million U.S. homes, while Tennis Channel was in 54.9 million. Tennis Channel already shows WTA American events, as well as the Grand Slams and ATP events.
Tennis Channel is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting.
