The semi-finals and finals of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, the innovative tennis event created by French tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou, will be shown by pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports across various territories after a rights agreement was struck.
SportBusiness understands that rights to the matches, which will take place on Sunday, have been secured by beIN in the Middle East and North Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.
Match highlights from previous rounds will also be aired by beIN as part of a deal that spans 35 territories in total.
The semi-finals will feature Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, France’s Richard Gasquet, Italy’s Matteo Berrettini and Belgium’s David Goffin.
Having launched during the hiatus to hit the professional tennis season as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ultimate Tennis Showdown has introduced various innovations. These include coaching time outs, coaches wearing microphones and matches divided into 12-minute quarters.
Broadcast coverage in over 100 countries has been secured for this weekend’s semi-finals and final.
Worldwide broadcast deals for ‘UTS1’ are being negotiated by In&OutStories, the Paris-based media rights consultancy launched by former Eurosport executive Arnaud Simon. In&OutStories is also responsible for the broadcast production set-up and advising on the content distribution strategy.
Ahead of its launch in the middle of June, Eurosport acquired broadcast rights to the competition across Europe, plus territories in the Asia-Pacific region and India.
Eurosport committed to showing two live matches each day, although its deal excluded digital rights to exploit on its Eurosport Player service given holdbacks for UTS’ own subscription OTT offering.
Deals were also agreed in USA (Tennis Channel), Canada (TSN) and Latin America (ClaroSports), while an agreement was signed in South Africa (SuperSport) shortly after the round-robin stage began.
