Discovery, MLB Make Push Into Europe With Streaming Services Joint Venture

Discovery Communications and Major League Baseball subsidiary BAMTech are jointly forming BAMTech Europe, a company providing digital services to content owners, broadcasters and over-the-top platforms in Europe, they said in a news release Tuesday. BAMTech Europe's first client is Eurosport Digital, which will get access to various European sports rights from worldwide sports properties, including current and future rights acquired by BAMTech and jointly by Eurosport and BAMTech, the two said. The deal is BAMTech's first move into Europe, and BAMTech’s back-end video platform and services will be implemented in 2017 across Eurosport Digital’s products, such as Eurosport.com and subscription-based OTT platform Eurosport Player, they said. The two companies also said they will collaboratively work on making premium sports events more widely available through streaming, including via current and future rights acquired by BAMTech and joint acquisitions. Disney also is working with BAMTech on its ESPN streaming service (see 1609220053), and it bought a third of the company for $1 billion (see 1608100024).