Sport streaming business DAZN and sports network beIN Sports have agreed a late broadcasting rights deal for France’s top football league Ligue 1, worth €500 million annually until 2029. The sale, agreed shortly before the start of the new football season, averts fears that a deal wouldn’t be reached in time. But France’s Professional Football League (LFP) has had to accept a figure significantly lower than it had hoped. The LFP had been targeting at least €1 billion annually overall for domestic rights alone – it will have to settle for around €700 million instead, including international rights and rights for lower league games.
The split of matches between DAZN and beIn Sports is yet to be finalised. AFP, which first reported the deal, says beIN is likely to get the primetime game in each round of fixtures, while DAZN will hold the rights for the other eight games. The deal includes an exit clause for DAZN and the LFP in 2027.
A cut price deal
The LFP had believed there was a very real possibility of not being able to sell the rights, and had been considering launching its own direct-to-consumer streaming service to show and monetise games itself, in the event of no deal being reached. Now however, this prospect is pushed at least two years down the line.
The agreement keeps beIN Sports, which has held Ligue 1 rights since 2012, as a major player in French football. And it looks like a significant win for DAZN, a recent entrant to the French market.
DAZN, which had a particularly tough time during the pandemic due to the complete lack of live sports to air, has been trying to pick its pre-pandemic plans for global expansion back up. The service is ambitious, and keen to pick up major sports rights in any new markets it enters, to establish itself as a major player. But rights are often prohibitively expensive – as seemed to be the case with the UK’s Premier League.
In France however, it’s managed to buy major rights at something of a discount price. The new €500 million deal is lower than the previous deal, which saw Amazon pay €275 million for eight games per round, and BeIN paying €330 million for the remaining two, sub-licensed from Canal+.
Implications overseas?
While this discount seems good news for DAZN, it does raise some concerns around the value of sports rights – often seen as a bastion of the linear TV model.
There were several factors affecting this round of negotiations which were specific to the French league. For a start, it’s still recovering from a turbulent few years following the 2020 collapse of an €814 million deal with Spanish broadcaster Mediapro.
In the wake of the collapse, the LFP agreed a massively discounted deal with Amazon for Mediapro’s rights, in an effort to shore up its finances. But in the process it angered long-time partner Canal+, which held the rest of Ligue 1 rights which Mediapro hadn’t bought. Canal+ wanted to renegotiate its own deal, which the league didn’t allow. And this resulted in Amazon paying €275 million a year for eight fixtures per round, while Canal+ paid more money for only two games per round.
Consequently, Canal+ hasn’t participated in new bids for rights. The withdrawal of what would have otherwise been one of the main contenders for Ligue 1 rights would certainly have affected the final price.
Ligue 1 has also been hit by a number of its best-known players – Kylian Mbappé, Neymar, and Lionel Messi to name a few – moving overseas in the past few years. Less star power means fewer viewers, thus lowering the value of broadcasting rights.
Nonetheless, overseas leagues may view the new deal with concern. Amazon, once seen as a major contender for sports rights, has decided to exit the French league, clearly not seeing enough value in bidding for new packages. The ecommerce giant similarly bowed out of the Premier League in its most recent auction. Sports leagues may have hoped that international streamers and tech giants might bring serious new competition in rights auctions, driving up prices. In Europe at least, this doesn’t seem to be happening.
