Football Premier League and RTR are ready to agree on Russian championship broadcasting

Russian football premier league and VGTRK are going to sign a contract these days on terms of broadcasting Russian championship matches in future years.

• We made an offer to the League that financially exceeded everything our football ever received from broadcastings, said deputy general director of RTR Vassily Kiknadze during his interview to SE correspondent Evgeny DZICHKOVSKY. - Moreover in the course of negotiations we have cleared up some points at issue. We understand that we are unlikely to get some profit from that, but RTR is a national channel, which considers football matches broadcasting from national point of view. We believe that RFPL and clubs' managers will think not only of their own interest, but of the importance of TV broadcasting to the Russian fans, to our football in general.

• Can you expand on the details of the future agreement?

• The assumed term of agreement - from 3 to 5 years. We receive exclusive rights from the League and commit ourselves to show minimum 30 matches of the regular championship. Just to compare: we have shown 8 matches in the recent season, 7 other broadcastings failed because of lacking agreement on the comfortable showing time. Each team will appear on TV at least once, but primary attention is to be paid to the central tournament matches. Of course this will lead to additional expenses but we are ready for that. But I cannot reveal the total sum of the contract.

• When are you going to sign the agreement?

• This is to be done these days, before January 1. Otherwise we risk raising expenses to an excessive rate.