Spain’s La Liga said it reached a deal to sell domestic broadcasting rights to air games from its top-tier football league to Telefonica and streaming service DAZN. They will pay a total of EUR 4.95 billion over five years following a controversial tender process. The agreement means Telefonica retains the rights to broadcast La Liga games in Spain after spending EUR 2.94 billion for the 2019-22 cycle back in 2018.
In a statement, La Liga said Telefonica and DAZN will each have the rights to five games per matchday except for three weeks in the season when Telefonica will have the rights to air all matches. The rights to broadcast matches to bars and restaurants and for a weekly game on free to air TV are not included in the deal and will be tendered in February or March 2022, added the league.
The 2022-27 auction was held after La Liga chose to overlook advice from communications and markets regulator CNMC to offer contracts of a maximum three years in length, a proposal the league regarded as non-binding. In its statement, it said bids for a five-year period “have contributed to greater stability in the medium term and have generated greater certainty among bidders to invest in La Liga content.”
It added that La Liga is the first of the top five European football leagues to reach an agreement for domestic TV rights that is higher than the previous deal. Italy's Serie A, Germany's Bundesliga, and France's Ligue 1 saw a decline in revenues in their most recent TV deals, with England's Premier League repeating the valuation of its previous package for another three seasons.
In 2018, Telefonica paid EUR 980 million a season for domestic TV rights to air live matches from La Liga over the 2019-22 cycle, allowing it to control the content broadcast on its Movistar+ pay-TV service and licence its La Liga channels to other operators such as Orange.
DAZN’s Spanish catalogue also includes football competitions such as the English Premier League, domestic Copa del Rey games, the Copa Libertadores, the FA Cup, the Carabao Cup, the Coppa Italia, the UEFA Women’s Champions League and Major League Soccer, as well as Formula 1.
Earlier this year, it reached a deal with Telefonica to allow subscribers to the latter’s Movistar+ pay-TV service to access all of its sports streaming content in Spain.
