The transfer of the TV rights of the Ice Hockey Championship League was not received enthusiastically at MTV due to the unsustainability of the business, says MTV CEO Johannes Leppänen.
Telia bought the TV rights of the ice hockey league with a six-year contract starting from the 2018–2019 season and signed an extension contract with them in the spring of 2022 until the end of the 2026–2027 season.
However, the company has quietly given up the rights and transferred them to MTV.
This happened at the turn of the year as part of corporate restructuring, says Telian’s Head of TV Tuija Kokkonen.
CEO of MTV Johannes Leppänen confirms that the Liiga’s TV rights are currently in their possession. According to the CEO, the business arrangement is part of a larger entity in which Telia plans to focus on telecom operator operations in the future and transfer its media operations to the companies it owns in Finland and Sweden, i.e. MTV and TV4.
In recent years, the league’s TV rights have not been a money maker for their owners, but rather the opposite, for example According to Kauppalehti’s data, they made a loss.
MTV is now responsible for paying for the rights, Leppänen confirms. According to estimates, the company will pay Liiga up to more than 90 million euros for TV rights until the end of the 2026–2027 season. The previous owner Telia paid approximately EUR 23 million annually for the rights in its first contract period.
– It is an honor to be able to make the League and show it to Finns. Business-wise, however, it’s not on a sustainable basis, and that’s why we’re of course not that excited about it, Leppänen admits.
Expensive sports rights are one of the reasons for MTV’s change negotiations
The media company MTV’s business has been loss-making for a long time. Iltalehti told in July that MTV has generated a loss of almost 90 million euros over the past four years. Now the company got to pay a similar amount for the Liiga’s TV rights over the next four years.
MTV announced the start of change negotiations for the entire company, i.e. about 430 people, in mid-August. In the bulletin expensive sports rights were cited as one of the reasons for the change negotiations. However, Leppänen tells that the change negotiations are not related to the League.
The CEO, together with the group’s management, is of the opinion that the price level for sports TV rights is currently too high and that also applies to the League.
Although from a business point of view owning the Liiga rights is not profitable, Leppänen says that MTV is committed to the Liiga contract until its validity, i.e. until the end of the 2026–2027 season.
– Now we have an agreement, which we will respect and make the League as best we can.
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