By Stuart Thomson
Russian pay TV operator Tricolor has secured rights to show matches from the country’s second-tier football league, the FNL, on satellite through a partnership deal with leading Russian web portal Yandex.
Tricolor will show FNL matches on its new Football Channel, which it launched at the start of this month and which is available as part of its Unified package.
The deal with Yandex, which held rights to the FNL to stream through its portal, will enable Tricolor customers to watch all rounds of the competition both on satellite and on the web. Matches will be available free-to-view on the Tricolor app for mobile devices and on smart TVs as well as on the operator’s kino-tricolor.tv on-demand site.
FNL matches will continue to be available live on Yandex, which has held the rights since 2019.
Rights to Russia’s Premier League are held by Gazprom Media-owned Match TV.
“For Tricolor, the presence of live broadcasts of FNL matches on our new Football channel is very important, as we are purposefully working to improve the content offer for our audience. Russian sport and its support are strategically important for us. And given the consumer preferences of Russian fans in terms of watching football on TV and the deep regional penetration of Tricolor, we are absolutely sure that football, the broadcaster and, most importantly, the viewer will benefit from this,” said deputy director-general for content at Tricolor, Nikolay Orlov.
“For us, appearing on television regularly is an undoubted step forward. We are getting closer to our fans and, in fact, gaining a new audience through the coverage of the largest pay TV operator in Russia. We plan to continue working on improving our content together with Yandex and Tricolor,” said FNL president Alexander Alaev.
“Our partnership with Tricolor is another step in the process of popularising the league and Russian football. Our goal is to make sure that football fans have more opportunities to watch FNL matches on different platforms and devices, and we hope that viewers will appreciate it,” said head of sports licensing at Yandex, Yulia Mishkuts.
