The French league and DAZN have come to an agreement to end their media rights contract after one season, with the league now having had four main broadcast partners in five years.
DAZN claims the league failed to protect its ‘exclusivity’, resulting in high piracy. Ligue 1 blames poor execution.
Without a main broadcast partner for next season, Ligue 1 is exploring the idea of creating its own direct-to-consumer service.
UEFA and Relevent, a newly appointed media rights sales partner, are already surveying the rights market for the next cycle starting in 2027.
With minimal competitive tension in major European markets, incumbent broadcasters are unlikely to increase their bids.
Relevent will, however, try to leverage increased US appetite for soccer to lure a streamer into a global deal.
We forecast broadcaster viewing share to drop to 52% in 2030 (from 58% in 2023), with the firming of its on demand viewing unable to balance out the decline of live: this is a slight improvement on our past estimates, with decline slowing.
SVOD viewing will begin to plateau in 2025, as video sharing platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Twitch) take an increasing share of engagement.
On the TV set, YouTube will grow strongly: we predict a 90% increase from 2023 to 2030. This is from a low base with broadcasters retaining 70% of viewing on the main screen in 2030
After an arduous ten-month process, France’s Ligue 1 has reached a tentative deal to license its 2024-29 broadcasting rights at a price 14% down on the previous cycle.
Adding France (for €400 million p.a.), DAZN now has prominent positions in four out of the five big European markets. With a weekly top pick (for €100m p.a.), beIN consolidates its model.
Attention turns to distribution, and whether DAZN will patch up its partnership with Canal+.
The German football league’s rights tender for its 2025-29 cycle is designed to create competitive tension between Sky and DAZN.
Based on precedents and public statements, we would expect Sky to increase coverage and DAZN to scale it down without a head-on bidding battle.
With low international potential, the Bundesliga can only count on its deep fan base to meet competitive pressure from the Premier League.
Streaming profitability beckons, but owes much to the profitable services folded into companies’ DTC segments alongside the headline streamers.
There is a broader move towards bundling and price rises. The former bolsters subscriber additions and lifetime value but is ARPU-dilutive, while price rises will bump up both ARPU and churn.
2024 marks the first year with multiple players at scale in the ad space, as Prime Video entered the market. Other streamers with high CPMs and lower scale may be forced to re-examine their offerings.
The Premier League will earn 3.5% more per year from its domestic rights for 2025- 29 than today, enough to maintain the gap with rival competitions.
Sky will pay 7% more for as many as 70% more games and cement the prominence of its Premier League coverage, while the Saturday 3pm slot could host the Women’s Super League.
TNT Sports secures its premium profile and Amazon shifts its focus to the Champions League.
Warner Bros. Discovery is grappling with declining legacy cable revenues and its $48 billion debt burden. DTC losses have attenuated but de-leveraging will be trickier post-2023 as many of the easier cost-savings have been achieved.
The US launch of its DTC offering, Max, attempts to dovetail IP from across Warner Bros., alongside Discovery's food, lifestyle and documentary programming, and soon, CNN. Adding sports may prove more challenging.
In Europe, WBD’s rational strategy would be to maintain a mixed distribution strategy, agreeing exclusive deals for its DTC platform with incumbent aggregators such as Sky.
Broadcaster decline accelerated in 2022, with record drops in reach and time spent. This was primarily driven by the lightest and youngest viewers leaving broadcast television while over-65s also reduced their viewing for the first time.
Loss of lighter viewers threatens the future viewing base of broadcasters and relevance to a new generation. Further, broadcaster status as the home of mass audiences becomes compromised.
However, retention of lighter viewers is not yet a lost cause. They are amongst the heaviest Netflix viewers, and the very lightest are spending more time in front of the TV set than previously—suggesting enduring appetite for TV-like content.
In a transformative upgrade of its content subscription offering, Google is buying the rights to live Sunday NFL games for $2 billion per year for 2023-2031.
YouTube can leverage its massive reach to challenge existing video aggregators, including pay-TV platforms and Amazon, as a gatekeeper to consumers.
Google will likely deploy a similar strategy in Europe, eventually competing with Sky, Canal+ and other incumbents—a hopeful development for football leagues.