by Mark Mayne
July 13, 2001

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Orange France has signed a seven-year deal with Club Europe, the French football league, giving the mobile operator exclusive rights to a range of streaming video content for 3G networks. The deal covers the period from August 2001 until 2007.

This marks Orange’s first foray into UMTS content rights, possibly spurred on by the recent announcement by Hutchison 3G that it had won UK football rights. However, the Orange France deal is specific to the French region, currently leaving other Orange coverage areas without such content. France also has only two UMTS players, making such a deal far easier to strike.

According to an industry observer, Hutchison has got the worst deal of the two, paying ‘way over’ £15m for a contract that expires in July 2004 - around a two years after the first mass-market 3G network is due to come online: ‘Orange has paid about half the amount that Hutchison has here, but has double the time to get services up and running.’

A spokesperson for Hutchison 3G commented that: ‘We are perfectly happy with our agreement with the FA – it marks a carefully assessed business decision.’ The company would not confirm exact costings of the deal.

An Orange spokesperson said: ‘This has got our foot in the door for gaining rights to international events. There is certainly potential here for using this content for GPRS networks, but the majority of GPRS services are likely to be text-based in the near future.’