The Ukrainian Premier League announces the completion of a historic event - a single television pool has been created! The majority of UPL Participants voted for the relevant decision.
Photo: upl.ua*According to the UPL charter, a decision is considered adopted if more than half of the Participants voted for it.
The international television company Setanta Sports became the official broadcaster of the UPL. The contract is designed for 3 seasons, the amount of the contract is $16.2 million.
Matches of the Ukrainian Football Championship in premium quality will be available to spectators at 3 venues:
- Setanta Sports linear channels (minimum 4 matches of each tour live + the rest recorded)
- OTT platform Setanta Sports (all matches live)
- Youtube channel Setanta Sports (2 matches live + all matches recorded)
As part of additional negotiations, unprecedented conditions were reached to promote the maximum accessibility of football for Ukrainian fans: except for 2 matches of each tour live, absolutely all UPL matches will be freely available on Youtube just 15 minutes after the final whistle.
Also, an important step for the popularization of Ukrainian football will be the quick transmission of match highlights to clubs in a record 6 hours after the end of the match.
Setanta Sports is a leading sports TV channel in 14 countries in Europe and Asia with a total population of 154 million people. Their linear channels are broadcast by 425 cable operators and reach up to 15.5 million households, making Setanta Sports the most popular sports channel in the region with an audience of more than 61 million viewers. In Ukraine, Setanta Sports already covers more than 2.5 million households.
The company has long-term premium sports rights in most of its territories and offers exclusive broadcasts of the most popular sports tournaments, such as: English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1, basketball Euroleague and NBA, the most prestigious women's and men's tennis tournaments, UFC, NHL, Formula 1 and more.
Now the Ukrainian Premier League will also join this respectable list.
UPL and its Members see this as an extremely important first step in the long term. We are convinced that this long-awaited experience will enable UPL to raise the level of the Ukrainian football product.
It is very important that in such difficult times, Ukrainian football clubs were able to unite and stand in line with the world's top football leagues, introducing the principle of a single telepool.
In the conditions of constructive negotiations, the clubs proposed and supported a position regarding the absolute necessity to adhere to the principles of equality of Participants and to comply with all obligations established by the Statute of the OPFCU "Premier League" and the regulatory and legal documents of the UAF and UPL.
The Ukrainian Premier League is grateful to all the Participating clubs who supported the relevant decision, as well as to the representatives of the UAF, which contributed to the negotiations and brought us closer to the dream goal.
But most of all, we want to thank the fearless soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: it was thanks to your courage and professionalism that this championship became possible in the first place!
We wish all of us an interesting and rich football season under a peaceful Ukrainian sky!
Glory to Ukraine!
