UEFA has handed Relevent Sports the keys to its national team commercial operation, signing the New York-based agency to an eight-year deal covering all national team competitions from 2028 to 2036. That means the Euros in 2032 and 2036, the Nations League, and all European qualifying campaigns for both the Euros and World Cup.
This is the same Relevent that UEFA already trusted with its men's club competition rights last year — a six-season mandate running from 2027–28 to 2032–33. Winning the national team portfolio on top of that makes Relevent the single most powerful commercial operator in European football. That's not a minor footnote.
CAA Eleven's 15-year run comes to an end
CAA Eleven, the agency UEFA literally created in Nyon in 2012 alongside Creative Artists Agency for the sole purpose of servicing UEFA, has been cut loose from its biggest account. Fifteen years of media rights, sponsorship, licensing, and account management — gone. They'll see out the current cycle through Euro 2028, and then Relevent takes the wheel.
UEFA framed the switch as a forward-looking strategic decision, citing Relevent's "compelling vision for the future commercial development of national team competitions." Which is how governing bodies talk when they want something different without saying the old arrangement wasn't working.
Relevent's origins are worth understanding here. The firm got its start promoting the International Champions Cup, the preseason tournament that kicked off in the U.S. in 2013 and eventually spread to Asia and Europe. That background — selling elite European football to audiences outside Europe — is exactly the profile UEFA wants running its commercial partnerships in an era when the global rights landscape is getting more competitive by the cycle.
The antitrust baggage, briefly
It's not a clean story. In 2019, Relevent sued the U.S. Soccer Federation and FIFA over the right to host official foreign league matches on American soil. The lawsuit ran for five years before Relevent dropped FIFA from the action in 2024. The USSF case, as of this deal's announcement, appears unresolved — or at least unmentioned by UEFA, which is a choice in itself.
Owner Stephen Ross, who also runs the Miami Dolphins, now has his agency sitting at the center of European football's two biggest commercial contracts simultaneously. For sponsors, broadcasters, and licensing partners looking at UEFA inventory between 2028 and 2036, every conversation goes through Relevent.
Whether they can extract more commercial value from national team football than CAA Eleven did is the actual question. UEFA clearly thinks so. The proof will come in what the 2032 Euros sponsorship packages actually sell for.
