Rebecca Jackson from Caretta Research kicked off last week’s Football Summit with an in-depth look at the current landscape for football broadcast and streaming rights across Europe, with a focus on the pivot from traditional broadcasting to a digital ecosystem.
A key takeaway was that while the value of total rights market is growing, football is actually slowing.
“At Caretta we’re tracking over 60 different sports, and what we see overall is that the sports rights value is growing,” said Jackson. “It’s currently at an all-time high at $60 billion, and by 2030 that’s expected to great to break $70 billion. Now a lot of this is due to the fact that there’s a lot of niche sports that are finding their platforms, finding new ways to tell stories, and really entering into that market. And obviously the bigger sports are also still being monetised. However, what’s really interesting is that a lot of these very high value sports – football, basketball, even American football – while they do have the highest value in terms of the rights they’re selling, they’re growing at some of the slowest rates.”
This is largely because a lot of them have already reached a worldwide audience, while the sports that are going at a faster rate are still reaching that capacity. However, this slowing growth for high value sports will impact a lot of broadcasters, leagues and federations.
Jackson also revealed the impact of a World Cup on football rights.
“If we look at this over time, World Cup cycles interrupt the flatlining football rights. Football rights as a whole, on a day-to-day basis, in terms of their value, are struggling to kind of keep up with previous years. Premier League rights have sold at the same rate for the last three years, Serie A rights are actually selling at lower rates. What’s keeping football growing overall is the World Cup and FIFA rights that are coming out on those four-year cycles.”
This is a cause for concern as clubs across Europe remain, and smaller clubs in particular, heavily dependent on income from domestic rights deals. Streaming is often cited as a potential saviour here, offering an opportunity to create a whole new ecosystem and attract new viewers, however this is not without its challenges.
“If we look at what’s happening in terms of sports right buyers and who’s primarily leading the sports rights buying, we see that while public service broadcasters and commercial broadcasters do still own the majority of those rights, they’re pretty flat lined in terms of the rights that they’re buying. Whereas we see significant growth across streaming at 3.5%, much of which is actually coming from telcos and pay TV, who are buying less rights. So this is really interesting, because streamers buying more rights directly impacts what’s happening on a production scale, especially if we look at big tech companies like the Amazons, the Netflix, because that results in a lot of centralised production, which does give good opportunities for big deals, but equally it gives less deals. So from a tech perspective, from a vendor perspective, that’s a new ecosystem that you have to navigate.”
The key then is to find new ways to rebalance and diversify revenue streams. “If we look at it from a tech side, specifically on the media opportunity and the rights opportunity, the first thing we see is additional media content needs to be monetised, and technology can really help support that,” added Jackson.
She cited highlights clips, which “offer opportunities for new technology to come into play, but equally for more people to have voices, to bring in new audiences, to catch more fan engagement”, as well as social media content. “You can basically transform social media from a marketing opportunity to a really high level, high performing digital margin. This opportunity also gives the athletes themselves the opportunity to speak on their sports, which brings in that fan engagement and lets people connect with the sport in more detail than you might necessarily get to when you’re just watching a match. This is fundamental in transforming that new audience that’s going to be coming to match days and paying for the broadcasts.”
“You can basically transform social media from a marketing opportunity to a really high level, high performing digital margin”
She also suggested moving to a selective selling model for match days. “Instead of asking broadcasters and streamers to buy big bundled rights, you can let them bid on specific games and specific match days, which ultimately means they can buy things without necessarily having the budget to buy the entire rights. Equally, it pushes up that total value and the overall rights valuation and it brings in that broadcaster diversity element. By not having one broadcaster buying all of the rights, or the majority of the rights, specifically on a domestic scale, you have domestic, international rights and multiple players who are able to contribute to that revenue overall.”
In-stadium revenue opportunities also should not be ignored, especially virtual advertising, where Caretta has recorded growth in sponsorship revenue from $2.9 billion to $15.9 billion from 2018-2024. “This is a huge opportunity that leagues, clubs, broadcasters should embrace in terms of further monetising that sport,” she added.
