John Ourand ofSports Business Daily reported late last week that ESPN has won the English language rights to an enhanced package of soccer rights brokered by UEFA. Univision is said to be the winner in the race for Spanish language rights.

The big prize in the deal is the 2020 European Championships which will be spread throughout Europe rather than following the traditional model of a single host country or sometimes a joint hosting.

The 2020 final and semi-finals will be held in London while the other cities hosting matches will be Glasgow, Dublin, Amsterdam, Munich, Bilbao, Bucharest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Brussels, St Petersburg, Rome and Baku.

ESPN currently holds the rights for next summer’s European Championship to be held in France.  Also included in the rumored deal are a number of other properties including Euro 2020 qualifiers, World Cup 2022 qualifying games featuring European countries as well as the yet to debut Nations League.

The new competition is scheduled to start in September 2018 and will wrap up in June 2019.

A picture taken on October 14, 2015 in Nice, southeastern France shows a woman walking by the Euro-2016 logo at the 'Allianz Riviera' stadium, a venue of the upcoming European football championships. AFP PHOTO / VALERY HACHE (Photo credit should read VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

It is easy to see why ESPN is interested in the package – lots of inventory and most of it running at non-peak times so no messy conflicts with major US sport properties.

Sports Business Daily reported the rights fee as $110M which is a significant increase on the present deals. How much of an increase is hard to estimate given that ESPN holds some of the rights while others fall under Fox.

The new deal follows a pattern set by US soccer broadcasters over the last few years. Pay a lot more than before but secure rights well into the future.

The deal also solidifies ownership of major soccer properties into four camps – ESPN (estimated 97M households), NBCSN (80M), Fox Sports (88M) and beIN Sports (17M). The make-up is significantly different than it was decade ago.

Fox Soccer was shuttered in 2013 after losing the Premier League rights and was folded into an expanded Fox Sports operation.

Gol TV was marginalized by the emergence of beIN Sports while NBC graduated from broadcasting Major League Soccer to the Premier League.

A decade ago ESPN was clearly the heavyweight given its ownership of three of the four most prestigious properties – World Cup, European Championships and the Champions League.

Only the Premier League escaped ESPN’s grasp but even then a sub-license agreement with Fox Soccer allowed ESPN viewers to enjoy some games from soccer’s wealthiest league.

The crack came when Fox Soccer scooped the rights to the Champions League starting in 2009 then followed it with an audacious and winning bid in 2011 for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup Finals.

Fox Sports then successfully leveraged the decision to move the 2022 World Cup Finals to the winter in the northern hemisphere into an extension that included the 2026 World Cup Finals.

The big three of ESPN, Fox Sports and NBCSN seem happy to leave the likes of La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 with beIN Sports while battling each other for the major properties.