Uefa hails shift away from EBU for Euro 2008

摘要

Uefa, the football body, has hailed its move away from licensing rights to the European football championships to the European Broadcasting Union. Europe's football association said that it had seen a 35-per-cent increase in the value of rights for Euro 2008 compared to the 2004 tournament, helped by the sale of the rights via sports rights agency SportFive. In 2005, Uefa awarded SportFive the contract to market the rights to Euro 2008. This year's tournament, which is held in Austria and Switzerland, also marks the first time that Uefa has taken production in-house. Previously, the EBU had overseen production of the matches. Alexandre Fourtoy, chief executive of UEFA Media Technologies, the wholly owned subsidiary of Uefa, said: "This is the first tournament where we've covered all aspects of media production. "So far it's pretty much a success. On the different platforms we are in charge of, I think the quality of the production has been very much recognised by all the broadcast partners." Uefa is spending about €50 million (￡39.7 million) on production and transmission.