Romtelecom rescues Boom in challenge to Digi Sport

Romtelecom will take on all of Boom’s sports content – including Portuguese League football, French and Brazilian Cup football, and English and French rugby union – as well as Boom’s personnel and technical infrastructure. Romtelecom had already acquired the Uefa Champions League pay-television rights formerly held by Boom in a new tender process and last week agreed a one-year deal for Romanian football’s second division, Liga 2. Romtelecom is paying €2,500 a match in rights fees, in addition to production costs.

Dolce Sport will aggressively target the rights for Romanian football’s top-tier league, Liga 1, when the rights come on the market next spring. The rights are currently held by GSPTV, a joint venture between RCS-RDS and commercial broadcaster Antena 1.

Dolce Sport had a soft launch last Friday, ahead of a full commercial launch next week. It is also set to launch a second channel, Dolce Sport 2. The channels will be available on the basic tier for existing Boom subscribers as well as to subscribers to Romtelecom’s satellite platform Dolce, as well as smaller cable and IPTV platforms, reaching in total about one million subscribers. Dolce Sport will be headed by Vlad Enacheschu, former head of sport at state broadcaster TVR and pay-television sports channel Telesport.

Boom entered administration earlier this year after its private equity backers decided to stop funding the company in late 2008 after being badly hit by the economic downturn.