By Paul Calleja, CEO, GlobalM.

There’s been plenty of noise lately about the fragmentation of sports rights, feeds being split up, packages getting smaller and the delivery landscape growing more complex. And sure, it’s a shift from how things used to be. But it’s not a problem. It’s progress.

Fragmentation, if embraced correctly, is one of the most commercially exciting shifts in our industry. It allows federations to sell more, deliver more and engage new buyers. It turns each part of production into a potential product, not just the match itself. With the right infrastructure, this isn’t chaos, it’s opportunity.

Not long ago, a broadcaster received a single world feed delivered by satellite. One signal, one format, one direction. It worked, but it no longer reflects how fans engage with sport or how rights holders want to monetise it.

Today, content is layered. Rights holders aren’t just selling the match; they’re selling access. ISO cameras, tactical angles, alternate commentary, branded board-replacement feeds, vertical video for mobile and highlight packages for digital. In motorsport, in-car cameras can be sold separately from main coverage. Betting platforms buy analytics or low-latency feeds. Even social and influencer-led commentary streams are licensed for platforms like TikTok or YouTube.

The reason is simple: the value of a single feed is finite. But when you break content into components, you create new products and new commercial potential. Federations now see every version of a feed, every camera angle, and every overlay as something that can be monetised. This opens the door to a far broader marketplace of buyers.

Advertising follows the same logic. With board-replacement feeds, the same match can be sold to multiple regions with different sponsor branding. Overlays, graphics and commentator reads can all be regionalised. That means more sponsors, more relevance and higher yield from the same event. Fragmentation, handled well, increases access and revenue and does it intelligently.

This is the modern sports-rights economy. For federations, it’s about monetising more layers of production. For broadcasters and digital platforms, it’s about delivering more targeted experiences. For fans, it’s about choice consuming the sport how, when and where they want.

It’s easy to be nostalgic for the old model: one global signal, universally distributed and centrally managed. But that approach was never scalable for smaller federations or emerging sports. It favoured those who could afford satellite infrastructure and long-standing partnerships. What we’re seeing now is a levelling of the field. Larger federations fragment their rights intentionally to create more value, while smaller ones adopt the same playbook by unbundling content and selling it to a wider range of buyers.

The definition of a rights holder has also expanded. Broadcasters are no longer the only customers. Radio networks, online publishers, betting agencies and even individual creators now purchase rights packages tailored to their needs. Newspapers licence match footage for digital use. A YouTuber even became a Bundesliga rights holder, a clear sign of how broad and flexible the market has become.

Divide and conquer

The challenge lies in delivery. Selling modular rights is one thing; delivering them efficiently and reliably is another. Legacy systems weren’t built for this. Satellite, while dependable, can’t handle the granularity or responsiveness today’s ecosystem demands. You can’t deliver 15 feed variants to a global mix of broadcasters, OTT services and digital publishers using one satellite path, nor can every buyer receive that signal.

That’s where orchestration and IP-based delivery have had to evolve fast. The modern workflow is about intelligent management, ingesting a feed once, then versioning, formatting and distributing it in real time to multiple endpoints. A single event may now need a high-bitrate stream for broadcast, a compressed mobile version for social, a clean feed for betting, and archived footage for post-production, all tracked simultaneously.

The orchestration layer has become as critical as production itself. It’s no longer enough to produce a feed; it must be managed intelligently across multiple pathways, each governed by its own commercial rules and technical requirements.

Each variant represents its own revenue opportunity. A player-focused ISO feed is valuable. A vertical mobile stream can reach audiences that traditional broadcasts miss. An AI-generated alternate commentary opens new markets. Even the ‘dirty’ broadcast feed, complete with graphics and commentary, has instant utility for smaller outlets. This isn’t complexity for complexity’s sake; it’s smart packaging for a marketplace that values flexibility.

Of course, this places new demands on technology. Delivery platforms must be rights-aware, transparent and accountable. If you’re distributing dozens of variants to dozens of partners, you need full traceability: which feed went where, which entitlements applied, and what metadata or watermarking was attached. The value chain depends on that visibility.

This shift also benefits smaller and emerging sports. They may not have global linear deals, but by monetising their assets digitally, highlights, ISO feeds, behind-the-scenes content, they can still reach fans and satisfy sponsors. Fragmentation allows them to compete creatively rather than financially.

Industry data supports this. Caretta Research shows a clear rise in rights deals across 2024, with more agreements shifting from traditional broadcasters to digital entrants. Platforms like YouTube now hold more sports rights globally than any single linear network, largely through tier 2 and tier 3 sports. The trend is accelerating, fragmentation isn’t a phase; it’s becoming the default model.

The real question now isn’t whether fragmentation is good or bad, it’s how effectively we can enable it. If the delivery layer keeps pace, fragmentation becomes a catalyst for a more dynamic, inclusive sports media ecosystem. Rights no longer need to sit behind a handful of global contracts; they can be distributed intelligently, scaled sensibly and monetised broadly.

If we get the delivery right, fragmentation won’t divide the industry, it’ll expand it.