Public service broadcaster Yle and commercial broadcaster MTV will share the Finnish rights to next year's football World Cup finals in Qatar, meaning every game will be available to audiences in Finland on free-to-air, terrestrial television.

Under the terms of the agreement, Yle will broadcast 42 matches - including the opening game and the final - while MTV will show a total of 22 games.

In addition, all games will be available to view afterwards on the viewing platforms of both broadcasters, meaning matches shown live on MTV can also be viewed later on Yle Areena.

"The most important thing for us at Yle is to ensure that significant sporting events are freely available to all people living in Finland," Panu Pokkinen, Director of Yle's Sports and Events unit, said. "There is increasing competition for sports broadcasting rights. Using these new types of partnerships, we ensure both responsible use of money and survival in the intensifying marketplace."

Yle and MTV have also agreed to jointly broadcast the men's 2026 World Cup, and the football partnership is one of a number of different collaborations Finland's public service broadcaster has entered into regarding sports broadcast rights. For example, the rights for last summer's Tokyo Olympics were shared with Discovery.

"It is great that the previously agreed collaboration for the 2026 World Cup will remain in place and that cooperation between MTV and Yle will begin for the 2022 World Cup," MTV's CEO Johannes Leppänen said.

The deal with MTV means that Yle has full or partial rights to broadcast almost every European Championship and World Cup tournament this decade, for both the men's and the women's games.

For the men's game, Yle will show the 2024 and 2028 European Championships, as well as the World Cup finals in 2022 and 2026. Meanwhile, the rights to the women's European Championships in 2022 - which the Finnish team has qualified for - and 2025, as well as the World Cup in 2023, have already been secured.

In 2018, matches broadcast on Yle television of the previous men's football World Cup finals reached a total of 3.9 million residents in Finland. The 2020 European Championships, played this year because of the Covid pandemic, delivered similar figures, with 3.8 million people in Finland watching.