"Rukh" offered UPL to create an OTT platform that will be free for 3 seasons

Rukh on his official website published the position of the club regarding a single pool in the UPL, proposing to create UPL-TV - its own OTT platform, which will be free for 3 seasons.

“The Rukh Football Club officially declares that it has never been an opponent of the creation of a full-fledged unified telepool. We are clearly aware that the unification of all the rights of UPL clubs and their centralized sale is the only way to create a quality product and increase the clubs' income. We are convinced that now the clubs have all the leverage to make Ukrainian football become commercially attractive. But we are fully aware that for this we need to act on our own, and not rely on some extraneous or otherworldly forces.

The media have repeatedly manipulated the position of our club, saying that Rukh is an opponent of the television pool and is trying to disrupt it. We assure you that this is completely untrue. The Rukh football club has always stood in the position of creating a single telepool. Combining all the exclusive rights of UPL clubs into one whole is, without a doubt, the only correct path that all clubs, without exception, should follow. Only in the event that all the rights of all UPL clubs are combined and a high-quality integral product is created, will we all be able to earn the funds that we expect. We assume that this is at least $1 million for each UPL club per year. This is probably exactly the base level of income from sales of media rights that everyone will agree with.

The first extremely important step should be the birth of UPL-TV. This is a company in which all clubs in the elite division will be shareholders in equal shares. Its primary task will be to create a high-quality product called the Ukrainian Premier League, provide full-fledged production of championship matches, produce competitive football content and promote it as successfully as possible on the market. In the future, this will allow selling the product for the funds expected by the UPL clubs. UPL-TV is an enterprise that produces a high-quality commercially attractive media product for a wide audience. To do this, we propose to create our own open-type OTT platform, which will be available to fans and free for three seasons. Such an OTT platform can be launched even tomorrow. For the promotion and availability of the product, it will be necessary to use other platforms: social media, Internet platforms, YouTube, etc.

Getting less than one hundred thousand dollars a year for the sale of their rights is not the ultimate dream for UPL clubs, because these are meager funds in terms of expenses for the activities and functioning of the club. That is why several clubs in the Ukrainian Premier League do not agree with Setanta's proposal at once, because they consider it extremely underestimated and unfair. The stumbling block is the fact that by selling the rights to Setanta, we are actually completely bringing the Ukrainian championship into the pay TV segment. We understand and share the reasons of the leaders of Dynamo Kyiv, the most capacious club in Ukraine in terms of the fan audience. By removing Dynamo matches from public access, both the club and the championship risk losing a significant part of the loyal football audience," the statement says.