It was very close to breaking up this time. In the end, however, Discovery – owner of the audiovisual rights – and Rai as far as it appears to Sole 24 Ore they reached an agreement on the Olympics. The Beijing Winter Games and the upcoming Paris 2024 Summer Games will be broadcast – in the free-to-air live part which consists of 200 hours for the summer games and 100 for the winter ones like the next ones in China – on public TV. Digital rights are also included. And other rights that go beyond the Olympics would also be included. Something more can be understood with official communications.
As for the complete coverage of the Games, the American TV giant, which also controls Eurosport, will make available, as for the latest edition of Tokyo, all the product through the Discovery Plus streaming service. Eurosport, visible in pay on Sky and on Dazn, on the other hand, will have the opportunity to broadcast a selection of the most important events.
A positive outcome, therefore, for a negotiation that began in March and was about to end up on a dead end due to the differences between the sum requested by Discovery and the maximum amount offered by Rai. In the end, as anticipated by the Sole 24 Ore website, the Give an arrived with the letter sent by the top management of Discovery – the match was followed by the group’s London headquarters – towards the upper floors of Rai with the formalization of the latest proposal concerning the audiovisual rights of the Beijing and Paris Olympics, including digital rights. All before the meeting of the Rai Board of Directors on Thursday 16 December called to have his say.
It should be remembered that the Discovery group, which controls Eurosport, in June 2015 acquired the rights for 4 editions (2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024) of the Olympic Games across Europe, putting 1.3 billion on the plate. The acquisition, for all platforms, however, provides for the transmission of 200 free-to-air live hours for the summer editions or 100 for the winter ones, including that of Beijing. In case of no agreement, for Discovery there would have been the “Nine” card: free channel of the group.
The agreement is obviously very positive also for Viale Mazzini, allowing public TV to breathe a sigh of relief with respect to certain controversies. Because if on the one hand the Rai branded Fuortes has put the company’s accounts under the lens – and the nocturnal editions of the regional TGR have ended up paying duty, albeit in the face of a surge of shields from politics as well as from the Usigrai union – the the question of the offer of major sporting events is obviously a delicate one. Suffice it to recall the controversy following Rai’s renunciation of the digital rights of the last Tokyo Olympic Games. In the end – this is the price of the decision – it would have taken an additional twenty million (23 to be precise) to add to the approximately 40 million for live TV. The board led by Fabrizio Salini decided to limit itself to live TV. A lack , rained on Raiplay, which ended up weighing.