The Swiss Football League (SFL) has launched its domestic broadcast rights tender, working in conjunction with its appointed adviser T Squared, the entity set up by the Team Marketing agency to house its new business activities.
The invitation to tender for the top-tier Super League, second-tier Challenge League and playoffs was issued yesterday (Monday). A bid deadline of 10am (CET) on March 25 has been set.
It runs for five seasons, from 2025-26 to 2029-30, and covers the rights in Switzerland and Liechtenstein in German, French, Italian and Romansh.
Domestic media rights to the Swiss Super League were sold exclusively to Swisscom in a four-season deal from 2021-22 to 2024-25. The telco sublicenses one match per week to public-service broadcaster SRG SSR throughout the cycle.
Team last year expanded its sports client base for the first time in its 32-year history by reaching a deal to become the SFL’s media rights adviser. The agreement was never announced, meaning that the deal unveiled last month to sell sponsorship rights and provide commercial advisory services to the Basketball Champions League was the de-facto launch of the agency’s new business era.
The new business activities have been spun off under a Luzern-based company to be called T Squared. This leaves the Highlight Communications-owned Team Marketing to focus on its work selling broadcast, sponsorship and licensing rights to the Uefa club competitions. Signatories for all new business will be under T Squared.
Parties interested in the SFL media rights must email T Squared (sfloffers@tsquared.ch) to request the tender documents.
Following the SFL’s last ITT process held in 2020, Swisscom’s Blue Sport secured rights to all matches. During the 2017-21 cycle, Blue Sport held domestic rights in a deal worth just over CHF30m (€31.4m/$34.1m) per season. The pay-television operator sold on a package of free-to-air rights to SRG SSR.
Blue Sport, previously known as Teleclub, has held rights to the Swiss top flight since 2006. Ahead of the last domestic tender, Swisscom and UPC reached a distribution agreement for their respective sports subscription services in a softening of relations between the rival telcos.
During the 2021-22 season, SRF, the German-speaking channel of SRG SSR, saw viewership for its live matches drop after fixtures were switched from Sunday afternoons to Saturday evenings. The increase in the number of match slots in its deal with Swisscom helped the SFL avoid a dramatic rights fee drop amid softer competition in the market.
New business activities
T Squared was established as a legal entity in Luzern in the middle of November last year. It is in the midst of staffing up and will be officially launched in due course.
Its four-person board consists of: Team chief executive Simon Crouch; Team general counsel Tom Houseman; Highlight chairman Bernhard Burgener; and Highlight board member Peter von Büren.
Team’s new business search has been led by Tom Höher, previously the agency’s managing director of media rights sales, and Kerstin Lutz, Team’s former managing director of partnership management. It was announced this week that Lutz will leave in April to become CEO of the new entity set up to commercialise women’s tennis’ Billie Jean King Cup.
Along with basketball, Team is known to have targeted business elsewhere in football and in esports. The agency was one of three bidders in the mix for the Belgian Pro League’s media rights sales advisory contract. That business was ultimately awarded to IMG.
Having historically retained its Uefa club competitions global commercial rights sales remit by hitting performance targets, Team was forced to dig deep during a competitive process initiated in late 2021. Team retained the contract after three rounds of bidding, losing only the US broadcast rights sales remit to Relevent Sports.
The agency faces the prospect of another global tender process for the Uefa rights from 2027-28 onwards.
Team did form a music division in 2003 that sold sponsorship rights to the Eurovision Song Contest, but this business was spun out under Highlight Event and Entertainment in 2012. The new arm was initially designed to allow Highlight to pursue other sports projects. This included a majority ownership in Comosa, the Swiss company behind the World Boxing Super Series.