May 3 – LaLiga is moving from Pay TV to OTT (over the top) in the UK after the Spanish league refused to accept an offer from Sky less than the £18 million a year deal paid in the previous cycle.
Eleven Sports, owned by Leeds chairman Andrea Radrizzani who was also a founder of the MP & Silva agency, have picked up the rights in a three-year deal that will run from the start of the 2018-19 season and run to the end of 2020-21.
Eleven Sports, founded in 2015, has built a significant portfolio of football rights including Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue1 for its markets that include Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy in Europe, as well as the US.
The company is one of those rumoured to be in the running for the two final packages of broadcast rights that the Premier League has left for the UK market.
LaLiga’s sale to Eleven Sports marks a growing shift in the broadcast sales market to explore the possibilities of web and app broadcasting in particular. It also marks a further tightening of broadcast rights fees, particularly in overseas markets for non-domestic product. Sky has been broadcasting Spanish football for 20 years.
“Eleven Sports are an excellent partner for us in various markets across Europe and we are delighted to have the opportunity to work with them in the UK and Ireland – important markets for us in which La Liga is very popular,” said Javier Tebas, president of La Liga.
That maybe so, but it is unlikely Eleven can deliver the quality of broadcast and exposure from the start of the deal that Sky had invested in their LaLiga output which generally headlined Sky Sports channels at least once a week (Sunday night was the big LaLiga show on Sky) and provided a large volume of content across Sky’s sports output.
Within their deal Eleven can on-sell matches including back to the traditional broadcast TV market. Eleven may also decide to set up a dedicated LaLiga channel. That would be an interesting test of the LaLiga brand to see how far it has embedded itself in the UK’s TV football culture. The danger is that it could be a massive risk and not attract or be able to drive audiences to the output in the way that Sky could.
The announcement of the switch to Eleven came in advance of the Real Madrid vs Barcelona El Clasico this weekend that rights holders say generally attracts a million viewers in the UK. The issue looking forward is how many viewers In the UK would tune in for the rest of the league’s output.
Sky’s answer looks to be not enough for £18 million a year.
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