TVI. “Conditions were not met” to comply with an agreement with SportTV

TVI has already reacted to the news that Sport TV has gone ahead with a lawsuit asking for 7 million, due to the rights to broadcast the matches of Euro 2020, postponed by the pandemic. As the games did not take place, the station Queluz understood that “the conditions for the fulfillment of the Memorandum of Understanding were not met.”

“In January 2020, TVI established a Memorandum of Understanding with Sport TV for the broadcast rights of UEFA EURO 2020 matches. The context, as is well known, has changed significantly due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the The sporting event in question ended up not being held ”, reacts an official TVI source, in response to Dinheiro Vivo.

“Faced with this abnormal change in circumstances and given that the games would not be played or broadcast within the expected period, that is, in 2020, TVI understood that the conditions for compliance with the Memorandum of Understanding were not met. “Says the same source.

“If there is a litigation process, TVI will present its arguments in its own place and at the right time,” he sums up.

This Friday, Tribuna Expresso said that Sport TV had advanced with a lawsuit against TVI, demanding the payment of seven million euros, on the occasion of the 2020 soccer Eurocup.

The value of the agreement between Sport TV and TVI was not disclosed when, in February, the companies announced that they had reached an agreement on the transmission of the National Team matches on the Queluz station, and not, as in competitions above in RTP1.

The agreement, closed at a pre-pandemic moment and when the station began to design its content strategy to regain the leadership of the SIC audiences, gave the station the exclusive right to broadcast a total of 22 games in open signal , one for each day of the competition, including the opening game on June 12 and the final scheduled for July 12.

In addition to all the matches Portugal was to play, TVI had acquired nine more group stage matches, four round of 16, two quarter-final matches and two semi-finals, in addition to two matches. that open and close the European Championship. The station had also secured the purchase of expanded summaries for its cable information channel, “allowing TVI24 to offer dedicated programs with one hour of daily images of the main moments of each match throughout the tournament.”

The deal, announced after TVI renewed the Champions League rights with Eleven Sports, was seen as a “turning point” for the channel.

“Euro 2020 is the turning point of TVI, it is a factor of national aggregation, which touches all Portuguese”, said Nuno Santos, then director of programs of the station, thus betting on working with content “transversal to the offer ”. of TVI programming, involving all faces and all programs ”.