Incumbents Team Marketing and Relevent Sports Group are the two agencies still vying to sell Uefa club competition rights from 2027-28 following recent presentations, SportBusiness understands.
The duo were both invited to present to Uefa and the European Club Association (ECA) in Switzerland late last month and have been shortlisted in the process.
They were among a group of at least five top-tier sports marketing agencies that met the September 10 deadline for bids to be submitted.
The last RFP run by Uefa and the ECA in late 2021 ended with Team losing US media rights to Relevent but keeping its remaining global commercial rights sales remit for the Uefa Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. Many industry experts believe this process will produce a similar outcome, potentially with Relevent expanding its media rights remit.
The RFP for global commercial broadcast, licensing and sponsorship sales, which launched on July 18, allowed bidders to submit offers over three or six seasons: from 2027-28 to 2029-30, or from 2027-28 to 2032-33.
As exclusively revealed by SportBusiness last month, the RFP also attracted bids from IMG, Infront and Pitch International, but the trio are no longer involved in the process. The presentations in Nyon given by Team and Relevent overlapped with the Sportel conference in Monaco.
Sportfive did not submit a bid, nor, it is understood, did Two Circles, despite having recently secured Uefa Women’s Champions League commercial rights from 2025-26 to 2029-30 and being viewed by many as a potential candidate to take on sponsorship rights sales for the men’s competitions.
The RFP process is being run by Uefa Club Competitions SA (UCCSA), the entity set up by Uefa and the ECA. Little progress has been made in the establishment of the joint venture as a commercial operation in order to allow it to sell the rights in-house during the next cycle.
The previous competitive tender process was a departure from automatic, performance-based extensions with Team in the past. The award of US media rights to Relevent broke Team’s 30-year, exclusive grip on the global commercial rights for Uefa club competitions. The current role performed by Team also includes global account management and associated services.
At present, Team does not provide a minimum guarantee to Uefa, instead working on a commission model.
Relevent pays a minimum guarantee of $250m (€235.3m) per season for media rights in the US. The agency was originally given a three-season mandate but this was extended to a maximum of six seasons, from 2024-25 to 2029-30, after US broadcasters made clear they would pay a far more significant increase should the rights be available for a longer period.
A $1.5bn, six-year English-language rights deal with Paramount was subsequently secured in the US market. Spanish-language rights were sold by the agency to TelevisaUnivision for three seasons, from 2024-25 to 2026-27.
For Team, the Lucerne-based agency will certainly be hoping to tie down rights for six seasons in order to provide itself with more security and be able to better plan future sales cycles. Team and owner Highlight Communications have moved to reduce their dependence on the Uefa contract by establishing T/Squared, a separate agency business.
In tough market conditions, Team has generated uplifts in most of the ‘big five’ media rights markets of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK during the 2024-27 cycle.
UCCSA has stated that it expects the winning agency (or agencies) to beginning selling to broadcasters and sponsors “in advance of” the second quarter of 2025.