Can there be ever be enough football on TV in Bulgaria, the country where, as one joke has it, every male is an expert on football and politics?

In recent years, anyone with a cable subscription could easily spend a Saturday watching nothing but football, as various channels broadcast live matches from the English, Spanish, Dutch, German and Russian leagues. And that was on Bulgarian channels alone, even if that meant listening to the occasional inane commentary.

Yet when it came to the pinnacle of European competition, the Champions League, the choice was non-existent. If you did not like the match picked by bTV, News Corp.’s free-to-air channel in Bulgaria, the only solution was to head to a pub with a Sky Sports subscription or surf the web for bad-quality peer-to-peer live feeds. Add in the dreary and patronising commentary and the mute button on the remote control was your best friend.

Football fans in need of their weekly fix of European matches will no longer have to put up with such limited fare starting this season, now that two other private media conglomerates have decided to aggressively go after bTV’s top spot in the ratings. Central European Media Enterprises (CME) and Sweden’s Modern Times Group (MTG) have bought the broadcast rights to the competition and will broadcast between the two of them a total of three live matches on each Champions League night.

CME’s free-to-air channel Pro.bg, formerly known as TV2, will have the first pick of the bunch, but it will be MTG’s Diema and Diema2 cable channels that will spoil fans for choice, with two live broadcasts and two recorded matches to follow later on. Unlike bTV, which offered brief pre- and post-match studio analysis, both CME and MTG will seek to expand that area of coverage further in a bid to draw in more viewers and advertisers.

Champions League qualification play-off round matches were included in this year’s rights package, so the battle is already on.

Pro.bg’s picks for the two nights were the "Battle of Britain", Arsenal vs Celtic, and the tie between Bulgarian champions Levski Sofia and Hungary’s Debrecen. "Our ace is that we have the right of first pick, regardless whether Levski makes the group stage or not," Pro.bg’s Champions League producer Alexi Sokachev said.

Sokachev was previously a commentator on bTV’s Champions League nights, often drawing the ire of even the more casual supporters with his commentary, but his switch to Pro.bg will take him off the studio floor. Instead, Pro.bg will use commentators from RingTV, the Bulgarian sports channel owned by CME.

"It’s a big challenge but we hired the best in the business," Sokachev said. Pro.bg hired the team of Italian Angelo Carosi, the editor in charge of the 2009 Champions League final in Rome, to ensure top coverage of Levski’s home match, Sokachev said.

Both media groups plan to invite outside analysts to their respective studios, with Diema putting a stronger emphasis than their rival on pre- and post-match coverage, seeking to emulate dedicated sports channels like Sky Sports and ESPN.

During the first leg of the play-off round, MTG picked only one match for each night, Sporting vs Fiorentina and Panatinaikos vs Atletico Madrid, with Diema2 broadcasting live English Premier League matches, but that will change in future rounds.

"Every Tuesday and Wednesday, viewers will be able to choose between two live matches and more to come after that. One channel, Diema, will be showing highlights of the other matches, while the other will broadcast a recorded match. Later on, the two will switch, with Diema showing a match and Diema2 – highlights,"  Vesselin Vassilev, sports director at MTG’s Bulgarian subsidiary Nova Televizia, said.

Champions League remains a big draw for viewers despite the criticism of over-commercialisation of football and in this case, fans are likely to agree with that basic principle of economics – more is better.