TNT Sports has lost the rights to show the Champions League from 2027 after a huge bid by Paramount+ won the contest to broadcast the tournament in the UK.
The broadcaster will also lose Europa League and Conference League matches, with Sky Sports agreeing a four-year deal from 2027.
The BBC has kept the Champions League highlights that it shows on Wednesday nights, sources told The Times. Meanwhile Amazon Prime confirmed it will continue to broadcast the first-pick Tuesday match in the UK, as well as the top-pick Wednesday match in Germany and Italy.
Paramount+, the American-owned platform, is understood to have submitted bids for various packages for Uefa’s club competitions. When its UK bid is confirmed it will mean football fans will have to take out another subscription to watch their teams.
As a TV viewer in the UK it would cost £76.96 per month to access all domestic and European football games from 2027. To do so, a viewer would need access to Sky Sports (Premier League, League Cup, EFL, Europa League, Conference League, £34.99), TNT Sports (Premier League and FA Cup, £30.99), Amazon Prime (Champions League, £8.99) and Paramount+ (Champions League, £4.99).
Paramount+ has been investing heavily in the film and entertainment industries and has recently done the same for sports — viewers in the United States can watch the Champions League on the platform at the moment and it also recently purchased the rights to UFC.
The Paramount+ live stream of the 2025 Champions League final was watched by 2.1million households in the US
JOHNNY FIDELIN/GETTY
It is believed to have bid for the rights to stream Uefa’s competitions in other European countries as well.
However no streaming platform bought the global rights to show the first pick of Tuesday night Champions League matches that had been up for grabs for the first time. Sources said the industry was not ready yet for such a step.
Amazon has the rights to the first pick of Tuesday Champions League matches in the UK at the moment and will keep that package beyond 2027.
The bidding process for the rights is being carried out by the agency Relevent Football and is said by insiders to be hugely complex with bids for the five major European markets — the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France — all taking place simultaneously.
It is likely that there will be different broadcasters for different packages in the various countries.
TNT Sports has shown the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League (since it began in 2021-22) since the 2015-16 season after winning the rights for the first time in 2013, beating Sky and ITV.
TNT Sports (formerly called BT Sport) has been the home of Champions League football since the 2015-16 season
SIMON STACPOOLE/GETTY
It still has Premier League rights and FA Cup rights — the BBC also has some FA Cup games — until the end of 2029, while Sky Sports has the rights to show the majority of televised Premier League games.
Paramount+ is owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation, a company formed in July 2025 when Skydance Media merged with Paramount Global, and is the parent company of CBS which previously agreed a record-breaking deal with Relevent for the US rights to the Champions League.
David Ellison is the chief executive of the new combined company, and is a big supporter of Donald Trump. He was among the guests who attended the US president’s dinner at the White House for the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday.
This will not go down well with fans
The arrival of Paramount+ on the scene as yet another broadcaster or streaming platform buying up TV rights to show club football in the UK will not go down well with supporters (Martyn Ziegler writes).
The Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) has warned that the growing cost of subscriptions to watch matches is pushing fans towards using illegal pirate streams.
Paramount’s securing of Champions League rights in the UK from 2027 will mean there are likely to be four pay TV broadcasters covering English men’s club football: Sky Sports (Premier League, EFL, Europa League, Conference League), TNT Sports (Premier League and FA Cup), Paramount (Champions League), and Amazon (Champions League).
That will mean a minimum of £77 per month to watch the lot, and it may be that Paramount could raise subscription fees for Champion League access. There is also the chance that a separate platform will have the rights to the 2029 Club World Cup — the British-based streamer DAZN had the rights to the 2025 tournament, though some games were on Channel 5.
Fans who want to watch women’s club football as well will also need to subscribe to Disney for all Women’s Champions League matches, with some being shown on the BBC. Sky Sports and the BBC have the rights to the Women’s Super League.
Splitting the rights between several broadcasters is increasingly seen as a way of maximising revenue by sports’ competitions. In 2021, for example, American football’s NFL agreed a world-record $110 billion, 11-year TV deal with four different TV channels plus a Thursday night match on Amazon.
Paramount bid considerably more than the £333m-a-year deal TNT had agreed with Uefa for 204-27, and its contract will run for four years.
Relevent Football Partners, the agency selling the rights for Uefa, had hoped to attract a bid from a streaming platform for the global rights to the first pick on Tuesday night – that would allow a platform to screen the game anywhere around the world, but significant interest in that failed to materialise.