Ziggo & FOX Sports agree carriage deal in time for Eredivisie season

Dutch telco Ziggo has renewed its carriage agreement with pay-television broadcaster FOX Sports following months of negotiations.

Under the deal, which commences from next month, the FOX Sports 1 channel will be free to Ziggo customers until the end of this year, with additional premium channels available at an additional cost.

Ziggo customers will now be able to continue to watch the Dutch Eredivisie, which FOX Sports holds domestic rights to in a 12-season deal running from 2013-14 to 2024-25. The telco currently has 300,000 customers who subscribe to FOX Sports channels.

Negotiations to extend the current agreement, which ends this month, were previously deadlocked, with Ziggo unwilling to meet FOX Sports’s revised payments model.

The Walt Disney Company owns a 51-per-cent stake in Eredivisie Media & Marketing (EMM), the media company that owns rights for the Eredivisie. EMM introduced a carriage model in 2016-17, which requires platforms to make payments based on its total number of subscribers, regardless of whether the subscriber watches FOX Sports Eredivisie. EMM / FOX Sports had already concluded contracts under the revised terms with telecoms operators KPN and Caiway.