Portugal antitrust watchdog scrutinises NOS, PT football broadcast deals

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's competition authority is scrutinising long-term deals worth hundreds of millions of euros to broadcast football league games signed by telecoms operators NOS and Altice's unit PT, a spokeswoman for the AdC watchdog said on Monday.

She said the authority was concerned over the potentially excessive duration of the deals and exclusive rights that they entail as that may restrict competition in the market, and was collecting information about the deals.

In the past two months, NOS and PT, the Portuguese unit of France's Altice, have signed deals worth a total of over 1.6 billion euros to broadcast games of premier league clubs. NOS signed up Benfica and Sporting, and PT struck a deal with Porto. The rights are for over 10 years in some cases.

Various analysts have noted that such long deals are banned by regulators in other European countries, and warned that the operators may run into problems with the authority in Portugal.

Mario Vaz, the CEO of Vodafone Portugal, has said recently that all operators should have access to the sports content as otherwise the freedom of competition will be compromised.

(Reporting By Daniel Alvarenga, writing by Andrei Khalip)