UEFA streams EURO 2016 to beat pay-TV black holes in Spain, Venezuela Juan Fernandez Gonzalez
| 13 June 2016
As UEFA didn’t realise any pay-TV agreements to broadcast EURO 2016 in Spain and Venezuela, the European football organisation has decided to stream half of the games through its own online platform.
uefa euro 2016After lengthy negotiations, Spain’s Mediaset and Venezuela’s Meridiano TV got free-to-air (FTA) TV rights for 23 games in their respective countries. But UEFA couldn’t close any pay-TV agreements for the remaining matches, as it has in most of the rest of the world.
Therefore, in an unexpected move, hours before the competition kicked off in Paris on Friday (10 June), UEFA announced that the 28 games will be streamed through UEFA.com. Streams will commence 15 minutes before kick-off, and UEFA is encouraging fans in Spain and Venezuela “to register with UEFA.com as early as possible in order to access live streaming of UEFA EURO 2016”.
The service will initially be supported by Safari browser for Apple devices, including landscape mode on tablet devices, but smartphones are not supported. It will also be supported by Edge for Windows 10 devices.
Access from other territories will be blocked in order to protect TV rights agreements with the relevant broadcast partners in each country.