Between a degraded product, financial instability and the accelerated entry of new actors, the market for television rights in football has been affected by the corona virus pandemic, a convulsion that invites a new distribution of roles for its model.
Canal+ and begin Sports broke their 해외축구중계사이트 contract for the French Championship, Euro sport renounced its rights to the Bundesliga, the French RMC Sport is also demanding money from UEFA for the postponement of the Champions League… The suspension of the competitions seriously obscured the financial horizon of the rights holders.
The sports streaming platform DAZN, a newcomer,
Especially in Germany and Italy, has already placed part of its workforce on imposed vacations, according to the press. In France, begin Sports confirmed a reorganization project.
Despite everything, the domestic rights of the French Championship are about to increase by 60% (to 1,217 million euros per year) and those of the powerful Premier League abroad exceed 4,500 million euros in the 2019-2022 period… Can these records continue to be improved?
“It is clear that COVID-19 is also going to have an impact on football.
But defining now how it is going to affect the value of the rights is a bit early,”Jayme Rouges, president of Medicare, future broadcaster of, said this week.
“Model in pain”
If the Catalan leader assured that he will not renegotiate the French football contract downwards despite concerns about the “quality” of the championship, the threat of being played behind closed doors for a long time or the financial losses of the clubs leave the doubt of a possible degradation of the television product.
“Broadcasters have known that this type of pandemic
Exists and could demand new termination or security clauses in contracts,” analyzes Stefan Kurten, director of sport in the European Broadcasting Union.
The suspension of competitions has been good for online platforms, already in full growth before the crisis.
«Netflix, Twitch (video games), social networks, all of this means that we mechanically have less time to consume sports on television. The sport-business model, largely based on cable, is suffering,” says Arnaud Simon, former CEO of Euros port France, now head of the Lineout Stories advisory firm.
These new actors have taken advantage of the moment to get a little more into the sport. Amazon, already the owner of some specific rights such as the famous “Boxing Day”, matches on December 26 in the Premier, took over several Bundesliga days left by Euros port.
