April 4 – China’s Wuhan DDMC Culture Co has added a second Big 5 European league to its broadcast rights portfolio, acquiring Spain’s La Liga for the country.
DDMC already has a deal with England’s Premier League via its acquisition last year of Super Sports Media who held the rights.
The Chinese sports and entertainment group took control of the rights via its Nice International Sports, a player agency based business.
The rights to La Liga in China, Taiwan and Macau were held under a five-season deal from 2015/16 to 2019/20 through Suning Group’s PPTV streaming platform. Last year, DDMC and Suning established a joint venture to focus on the Chinese sports-rights market.
Ownership in the Chinese sports rights market is becoming increasingly interwined.
Nice International Sports holds a 46% share of BORG B.V. and plans to spend €18 million to increase its shareholding to a controlling 70% of the company.
This will give Wuhan Double will have a controlling share of two subsidiaries of BORG B.V. – Media Base Sports (Spain) and Media Base Sports (UK).
Media Base Sports (MBS), is run by Pere Guardiola, brother and agent of Pep, and has a client list that includes Barcelona stars Andres Iniesta and Luis Suárez.
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