Relevent's UEFA deal for national team commercial rights, 2028 to 2036

Key takeaways

• UEFA has agreed a deal with Relevent to sell commercial rights for its national team competitions over an eight-year period from 2028 to 2036.
• Relevent is a US firm owned by Stephen Ross, who also owns the Miami Dolphins, so an American sports investor now has a long-term role in European international football.
• UEFA sells national team rights centrally, which means the agency it appoints affects the income of every member association, not only the biggest ones.
• The financial terms, the exact list of rights covered and how the revenue will be split have not been reported.

The Relevent agreement for UEFA national team competitions

ESPN reports that UEFA has signed an agreement with Relevent to sell commercial rights for UEFA's national team competitions for the eight years from 2028 to 2036. That is the main fact, and nearly everything else depends on how such a deal works.

When a governing body appoints a commercial partner for a set of competitions, it is usually outsourcing the job of selling. The partner takes the inventory UEFA controls, finds buyers in different markets and negotiates contracts with them. The inventory can include sponsorship categories, perimeter and broadcast-adjacent assets, and sometimes media rights in particular territories. UEFA remains the owner of the competitions and the rights. The agency's job is to turn those rights into contracts.

Agreements of this kind can be structured in different ways. Some agencies work on commission and take a share of whatever they sell. Others guarantee the rights holder a minimum sum and keep part of any revenue above it, which moves risk from the governing body to the agency. A third option is a joint arrangement in which both sides share the upside. The source does not say which model applies here. The value of the deal, any guaranteed minimum and the exact mix of rights in scope are all unknown, and nothing below assumes otherwise.

The length is the clearest structural feature. Eight years is long enough to cover several qualifying cycles and final tournaments. It means UEFA's commercial approach to international football is now fixed with one partner well into the next decade.

Relevent as a commercial partner

Relevent is a sports and entertainment company owned by Stephen Ross, who also owns the Miami Dolphins of the NFL. He is relevant here only as a public fact about who owns the company. The deal itself is between UEFA and the firm.

Relevent already has a presence in European football through its involvement in the commercial side of UEFA's club competitions, the set of tournaments headed by the Champions League. That matters for this agreement. An agency already selling club competition rights brings existing relationships with sponsors and broadcasters, as well as knowledge of how UEFA packages its products. Adding the national team competitions means one firm will be closely involved in selling both major parts of UEFA's portfolio.

There are advantages and drawbacks. Using one partner can make things simpler for global sponsors who want to buy into club and international football at once. It also lets UEFA present a consistent offer in markets where European football is still growing, North America in particular. The drawback is concentration: when one agency handles so much of a governing body's commercial activity, the relationship carries more weight and is harder to replace if it does not work out.

Centralised selling of national team rights

The deal matters well beyond the agency itself because of how national team football is sold in Europe. UEFA sells the rights to its national team competitions centrally rather than leaving each national association to negotiate its own home matches. Under central selling, the governing body pools the rights, sells them as a single product and then shares the income among its member associations.

The arrangement is meant to stop the commercial value of international football piling up with the associations that have the largest domestic markets. If each association sold its own home qualifiers, those with big television audiences would earn far more than those without. Central selling evens that out, so smaller associations get a share of income their own markets could not produce.

The agency appointed to do this selling therefore has a direct effect on every member association's finances. If the agency does well, the shared pool grows. If it does badly, the effect spreads across the whole membership, including associations that rely on that income to fund coaching, youth development and women's football. The agency is not a neutral intermediary. Its performance feeds into the budgets of football federations across the continent.

How UEFA will distribute any revenue under the new arrangement has not been reported. The distribution model is set by UEFA, not by the agency, and the source gives no detail on it.

The 2028 to 2036 window

The start date also tells us something. Commercial rights for major competitions are normally sold well ahead of time, because broadcasters and sponsors plan their spending over years and want certainty about what they are buying. Signing a partner now for a period starting in 2028 gives the agency time to build its sales programme before the first rights it controls come into effect.

The source does not say which competitions are covered, beyond national team competitions. In UEFA's calendar that category generally includes qualifying campaigns, the Nations League and the European Championship finals. Whether all of them are in this agreement, and on what terms, is not stated, so it would be wrong to assume the deal covers every one of them in the same way.

What the deal says about money in European football

Taken together, these points show where the commercial side of European football is heading. Rights to the game's main competitions are increasingly sold by large, specialist agencies with international reach, and some of those agencies are owned by investors from American professional sport.

That links to the main theme of this section, which is how money reaches the rest of the game. The Champions League is the biggest earner in UEFA's portfolio, and its revenues already shape the gap between clubs that qualify regularly and clubs that do not. National team football works differently. Because it is sold centrally and shared out, it is one of the main ways commercial income reaches associations whose clubs seldom play in the latter stages of European competition. The agency selling those rights is therefore part of a system that, in principle, spreads income rather than concentrating it.

One firm holding long-term roles in selling both UEFA's club and national team rights raises questions that can only be answered once the terms are known. These include how the deal is valued and whether income is guaranteed. Another is how strongly the agency will focus on markets outside Europe, and what that focus means for where and when matches are scheduled and how they are presented.

For now, the confirmed facts are limited: UEFA has signed Relevent, the firm is owned by Stephen Ross, and the deal runs from 2028 to 2036. The financial and operational details will determine whether the arrangement increases the money shared across European football or mainly changes who sells it.

Sources and further reading

• ESPN, report on UEFA's agreement with Relevent for national team commercial rights from 2028 to 2036
• UEFA, official statements and regulations on how national team competition rights are sold and distributed
• UEFA, published financial and distribution reports for member associations
• Sports business trade press, background on how sports rights agencies are structured and paid