Nova to Sell Ad Time for A1 Bulgaria

The Bulgarian national commercial broadcaster Nova is to start selling advertising on the sports channels operated by A1 Bulgaria, formerly known as Mtel.

Capital reports that A1 Bulgaria has worked with Nova since last year, producing the telco's sports channels MAXSport 1, MAXSport 2 and EDGEsport.

The partnership between the two companies comes at a time when the Czech Republic's PPF Group is trying to buy Nova. It already owns Telenor Bulgaria, so A1 could find itself in the portfolio of a media group with the same ownership as its competitor Telenor.

Nova already sells airtime for over 20 TV channels that are not part of its own portfolio. It sees its own sports channels as being complementary to, rather than competitors of, those owned by A1 Bulgaria as they hold different rights.

As previously reported by Broadband TV News, A1 Bulgaria launched its three sports channels at the beginning of 2017.