Home » Sport » TVN sports offer ski jumping Edward Miszczak is probably not the last move

TVN sports offer ski jumping Edward Miszczak is probably not the last move

A few days ago Discovery announced that it has extended its broadcasting deal by the end of the 2025/26 season, including from the World Cup in jumping and other skiing disciplines. The broadcaster has not sub-licensed the Polish Television to show the competition in the open channel.

The contract extended by Discovery Sports and its rights broker Infront covers transmissions of the Women’s and Men’s World Cup in Ski Jumping, Alpine Skiing, Cross-Country Skiing, Nordic Combined, Snowboarding, Freestyle Skiing, as well as the Nordic and Alpine World Ski Championships and ISU competitions in skating and biathlon World Team Challenge and summer Grand Prix in ski jumping.

According to the Broadcasting Act, the World Cup and World Championships in Ski Jumping and Nordic Skiing with the participation of Polish competitors are socially important sports events and must be shown on the free channel.

In recent seasons, they could be watched on open channels of Telewizja Polska, under a sub-license from Discovery. The previous contract was in force from the 2016/17 season and expired in spring this year. at the end of last season.

This will change from the coming season. In the announcement, Discovery announced that foreign ski jumping World Cup tournaments will be available on the main TVN.

“Ski jumping is home entertainment”

Why has the broadcaster decided not to sub-license these broadcasts to Telewizja Polska this time? – At TVN Grupa Discovery, we always put Polish viewers first and invest in content to show them the most important sports events in the world. Ski jumping is a beloved discipline of Poles with great potential – the company’s press office was provided to Wirtualnemedia.pl.

– The successes of Polish sportsmen always attract the attention of fans. There are a lot of these successes in ski jumping, and our jumpers – Kamil Stoch, Dawid Kubacki or Piotr Żyła – always fight for the most important prizes and are the favorites of the fans – it was listed.

– In recent years, Eurosport has recorded new records in viewership of ski jumping. We are convinced that this season will be even better, as we are additionally increasing the reach and reaching viewers thanks to broadcasts in open channels. We are going to take jumping reports to an even higher level. During the Olympic Games in Tokyo, we once again showed that we are able to cover the most important sporting events in the world like no other – the Discovery Group assures TVN.

TVN Program Director Edward Miszczak pointed out that ski jumping is watched by whole families. – Jumping is more than just a sports discipline, it is home entertainment, where you can ask your children, wife, someone else on the couch to see what is going on there, if the Poles are a great start – stated.

Miszczak: we have dreamed about this sport for years

So far, there has been little sports content on the main TVN channel. There were single broadcasts, annual charity football matches, and many years ago strongman competitions.

– We dreamed about this sport for years. We have all the other fields of television art, entertainment, movies, series and news. Sport was constantly passing us, as a group, sideways – admitted Edward Miszczak. “We even started in one of the hands, but those rights went elsewhere,” he pointed out.

The situation changed significantly at the beginning of 2018, when Scripps Networks Interactive, the then owner of the TVN group, was taken over by Discovery, to which Eurosport belongs, for broadcasting the Olympic Games and many cycling and tennis competitions.

– I think it is wonderful that of these great sports activities, jumps were the first in our group, because it is probably not the last move – emphasized Edward Miszczak.

In October last year the broadcaster also decided to show the decisive matches of Iga Świątek in Rolland Garros on the main TVN. The semi-finals on TVN and Eurosport were watched by 878 thousand. people (of which 527 thousand in the open channel), a final – 2.51 million viewers (1.35 million on TVN).

– We always put the audience first. We know that sport is about emotions best experienced together. We do not rule out that in the future some Eurosport transmissions will also reach other antennas – the TVN press office of the Discovery Group told us.

TVP loses broadcasts from jumping after two decades

Almost all Ski Jumping World Cup competitions have been shown on TVP channels continuously for 20 years, from the successes of Adam Małysz in the 2000/21 season. Before that, the 4-Hills-Tournament was broadcast regularly.

From the next season, Telewizja Polska will continue to show only ski jumping tournaments in Wisła and Zakopane, because it obtained the rights to broadcasts in open channels from the Polish Ski Association (at the beginning of 2019, the contract was extended until 2026).

In a statement released a few hours after Discovery’s announcement that the jumping contests will be broadcast on TVN’s mainstream TV channel, Telewizja Polska emphasized that “this is an unprecedented situation” because TVP “has been broadcasting ski jumping for several decades, building the popularity of the discipline, recognizing players and increasing the sponsors’ exposure”.

It was noted that Discovery made such a decision “despite many months of negotiations”, “depriving the public broadcaster of most competitions in one of the most important sports disciplines, and socially – to an event uniting millions of Poles.”

It was recalled that Infront is selling the broadcasting rights in Europe on behalf of the FIS. – Telewizja Polska tried to obtain rights for the Polish market directly from Infront, but was not given the opportunity to participate in a fair and market tender. The Discovery Group has acquired rights for the whole of Europe (over 40 national markets) by preventing TVP from negotiating, while ensuring that it will grant a sub-license to the public broadcaster – stated the public broadcaster.

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