Step by step, private television stations have started redistributing the market of broadcasting rights for sport events, creating, in the end, a situation of complete market saturation that was almost unthinkable a few years ago.

For the first time, the most profitable and attractive football club tournaments in Europe, the Uefa Champions League and the Uefa Cup Tournament (or the Uefa Europa League, as it will be called as of 2009), will be shown on cable channels, and not on one of the three terrestrial broadcasters. The news came on December 4, when Diema and TV2 announced that they had won the rights to show games from the two tournaments, starting next season.

The deal
The two stations declined to disclose the cost of the three-year deal, only saying that TV2 had offered the best price, which was why it would have the "first pick" rights on which games to show. According to the terms of the deal, TV2 will show two Champions League matches, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Diema, too, gets to show two Champions League games, along with match highlights. In total, Diema will show most of the Champions League games, or a total of 112 matches a season, which includes matches from the group stage, the round of last 16 and the quarterfinals. Naturally, with the semi-finals each comprising two matches, they will be shown on TV2, the same as the final match.

TV2 applied the same model of sharing coverage in obtaining the rights to show matches from Europa League. Instead of sharing it with Diema, TV2 will be in one boat with the public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television (BNT), which, until now, has been the channel showing Uefa Cup matches in Bulgaria.

TV2 will use its sister channel in Bulgaria, the sport station RingTV, for showing these games. This time around, it will be BNT that will have the first pick of showing a total of 15 matches a season, played on Thursdays, while RingTV will get to show the rest. The latter plans to show two matches a day, one starting at 8pm and the second at 10pm. Both BNT and RingTV said that they had won the rights to show the matches online and via mobile phones.

The players
Diema long ago showed an appetite to become the leading sport channel in Bulgaria. The station is owned by the Nordic Modern Times Group (MTG) AB and is already showing games from the English Premiership and Championship, which have, logically, proven very popular in Bulgaria. Diema made headlines and history this past summer by getting the rights to show the Uefa 2008 European Championship, the first time in Bulgarian history when such a major international sport event was not broadcast by BNT.

The highlight of MTG AB's long-term investment plans in Bulgaria was its recent acquisition of the country's second private free-to-air national TV station, Nova Televisia, for 620 million euro from Antenna Bulgaria, a member of the Greek Antenna Group. Weeks after the deal was completed, MTG said that it would move all sporting programmes from Nova to Diema, which means that Diema will indeed satiate its hunger.

TV2 and RingTV are both owned by Central European Media Enterprises (CME). Unlike with Diema and Nova Televisia, the Bulgarian CME channels will divide the sport events that they show in the country. Although RingTV was started as a true sport channel, while TV2 was launched with a focus on entertainment, the two already share some sports coverage. RingTV has been showing matches from the Dutch, Russian and Portuguese leagues. As of this season, TV2 started showing games from the Bulgarian League as well.

Up until a few years ago, BNT was the only TV station in the country showing international and domestic sport events. With the launch of bTV, the first private free-to-air TV station, owned by News Corporation, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch, BNT lost the rights to show Uefa Champions League games and the extremely popular Formula One races. The lost of the TV rights for Euro 2008 to Diema was a serious blow for BNT, which was only softened by the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Once the monopoly on the market, BNT now shows only some matches from Bulgarian football, basketball and volleyball leagues and skiing world cups.

Following in the footsteps of Diema, TV2 and RingTV, TV7 is slowly but surely making attempts to find its way on the Bulgarian sport-television market. Up until now, the station had been showing football games from the Italian Seria A and the Spanish Primera Division. Its biggest move came this past May, when it was announced that it had won the rights to show Formula One races as of next season. Again, some of the races will be shown on TV7, while others are to be broadcast on Cablesport 7.

The three-year deal is the station's largest commercial enterprise by far. It was probably one of the reason why it became attractive for buyers; a few weeks ago it was announced that the station would be sold to Nova Bulgarska Media Group, together with the Bulgarian-language daily Express. The group already owns the dailies Monitor and Telegraf, and media speculations often refer to it as close to one of the ruling coalition partners of the Bulgarian Government, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.

Lagging behind
Of all the channels mentioned above, it seems that the biggest loser as regards recent developments is Murdoch's bTV. In less than a year, the channel lost all the rights on the major sporting events it used to hold: Uefa's Champions League and Formula One, which means that, as of next season, bTV will show not a single sporting event.

Much of the reason for this lack of desire to compete with rivals could be attributed to the News Corp's July move, when it hired Lehman Brothers to ascertain the value and strategic options of the stations it owned in Bulgaria, Latvia and Serbia. After the collapse of Lehman Brother, News Corp appointed JPMorgan Chase to advise it on the sale. Although News Corp only said that it wanted to evaluate its assets, and not necessarily sell them, the lack of investments in otherwise profitable sport-TV broadcast rights speaks for itself.

Challenges
Getting broadcast rights is one thing; finding companies willing to spend money on advertising during a financial crisis is another. The fact that both Uefa's Champions League and Europa League will be shown on several television stations could prove difficult for the latter's attraction of enough advertising to justify the money spent on getting the rights, especially since the Bulgarian TV market does not impress with its size or consumer purchasing power. It will all depend on how good the stations' business plans for the next three years are.

The first signs are already visible. On December 8, CME said that it was cutting its production cost and increasing advertising rates. So far, all of the TV stations have shown determination and a belief to succeed in cashing in the money invested, which, if nothing else, will be beneficial for Bulgarian sport fans, who will get to watch all their favourite sporting events live on Bulgarian TV.