Sportway Media Group (SMG) is very proud to have entered into a partnership with the Swedish Football Association and the league organisation Ettanfotboll for all media rights relating to Ettan, which is the third highest football league in Sweden for men with a total of 32 teams playing the two series Ettan norra and Ettan södra.
All 484 games each season will be produced and made available to watch for fans all over Sweden. The productions will be done via a combination of state-of-the-art AI technology and more traditional broadcast set-up. As part of the partnership, SMG will install AI camera technology at all 32 clubs, from Boden in the north of Sweden to Malmö in the south.
“Ettan has seen substantial progress in recent years as a league and the TV-product with that. The new partnership with Sportway Media Group to handle our media rights starting the 2023 season will help us continue our growth, increase the distribution and further establish Ettan as the most prominent “talent league” of Swedish sports. With Sportway as a partner we will take smart and innovative production to the next level, and we believe it will enable us together to build an even broader audience”, says Johan Englund, Chairman of the league organisation Ettanfotboll.
Daniel Franck, CEO of SMG, adds: “Football is the biggest sport in Sweden with both many active players as well as a strong fan following. We at SMG are thrilled to be part of making all games played in Ettan available for everyone interested in following their favourite team and players. With our automated state-of-the-art AI technology we will also be able to do this while keeping production costs down which helps strengthening the resources within the football system for player development”
The partnership with the Swedish Football Association is the second agreement for SMG in the Swedish market and adds to the already existing agreement SMG has with the Swedish Ice-hockey Association. In that agreement SMG has over 250 cameras installed in ice-rinks all across Sweden and stream in excess of 50,000 ice-hockey games each season.
The league organisation Ettanfotboll was founded in 2006 when the league system was redesigned in Swedish football. Ettan is the third highest league in Swedish football. Between the seasons of 2006 up to and including 2017, the Ettan series had 14 teams in each series, but as of the 2018 season there are 16 football teams in each series, divided into a northern (Ettan Norra) and a southern (Ettan Södra) group. The league is labelled elite football but players are semi-professional. Ettan is widely recognised as a true talent development environment, with young squads, where more than 50 players each year progress as professionals to higher levels in Swedish football or abroad. The league is a talent league also for referees and coaches and the league organisation invest a lot in club development activities to assist clubs to become sustainable over time and prepare for advancement to higher league levels.
Sportway Media Group is the owner of the technology and software supporting the streaming services. Sportway is operating streaming services in 6 countries, within all major team sports and with close to 1,000 cameras installed. Sportway have offices in Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Prague.
