Telemundo interested in Copa America rights

Telemundo Deportes are interested in acquiring the Spanish-language rights to Copa America 2020 after successfully broadcasting the 2019 Copa America last summer.

World Soccer Talk understands that discussions are underway to determine who will acquire the rights to this summer’s competition, which will be held jointly by Argentina and Colombia.

In an interview in Miami with World Soccer Talk, Telemundo Executive Vice-President Eli Velazquez said, “We’re looking at that event. We just did the recent one so we’re still studying it very closely and very urgently as you can imagine as it’s this summer. It would be fantastic and an honor to have it, like I feel with any event that we’re given the privilege to execute on.”

Starting with this edition, CONMEBOL will run the tournament every four years in even-numbered years.

SEE MORE: Schedule of 2020 Copa America games

“What last summer taught us is that there really is a huge appetite for futbol, and that the futbol appetite extends beyond the men’s game,” Velazquez said. “The women’s game has really taken off.

“When you look at the success of what we did this past summer, and looking at our Premier League numbers which are up versus last season, our position is that futbol is going to be even more special in the years to come and we’re uniquely positioned to take advantage of it.

“We’re focusing very heavily on our Tokyo 2020 plans, which do include a large amount of soccer matches. We’re going to double down on the women’s game. More matches for the women’s game than ever before.

“We’re going to give fans the games on as many platforms (Telemundo and Universo) as we can, live. And then we’ll stream the rest.

“On top of that, we’re going to have for the first time ever simultaneous productions of futbol on both of our networks during an Olympics games where in the past we had Olympic matches going on one after the other on different networks.”

Andres Cantor and Manuel Sol will be going to the Olympics to commentate games on-site, Velazquez added. “We’re looking at Miguel Gurwitz return as the host of the coverage during the live windows. Ana Jurka, who did an amazing job during the Women’s World Cup, will be back hosting portions of the day, but not from Tokyo because she has other commitments during the course of the broadcast day.”

Copa America 2020 runs from June 12 to July 12, while the soccer portion of the 2020 Summer Olympics will be held July 22 to August 8.