Why live sport is a 'magic serum' for TV - but not everyone is winning

According to analysis conducted by SportBusiness into 30,000 deals, the total value of sports rights has never been higher.

As the researchers admit, this year's 12% increase to £49.5bn can partly be explained by having had both the Paris Olympics and men's European Championship football this summer. But the market has also been buoyed by some record deals, and increasing competition.

This month the Premier League revealed its total income from overseas media rights sales was up 23% for the 2025-28 cycle compared to the current one.

A recent six-year £439m deal with Thailand, Cambodia and Laos - twice the value of the current agreement - provided further evidence of the continued appetite around the world for English football's top division.

But that looks small when compared to the US - the biggest market for sports rights.

The best example? Basketball's NBA secured a blockbuster 11-year global deal for live rights worth £59bn with Disney, NBC, and Amazon's Prime Video this year - a threefold increase - and the latest sign that streaming services are moving into live sports, which has traditionally been dominated by broadcasters and pay-TV companies.

Meanwhile, American Football's NFL is in the middle of a £11.6bn seven-year deal with Google-owned YouTube. Fellow tech giant Amazon is another partner of the NFL as part of a mammoth £89bn ($113bn) deal that generates £10bn per season - an 80% increase on the previous agreement.

And then there's Netflix. Having live-streamed a tennis exhibition match between Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal in Las Vegas in March, the platform recently showed Mike Tyson's fight against influencer Jake Paul, albeit with well-documented technical glitches.

This all came after the news Netflix had also invested in global rights to show two NFL matches on Christmas Day - reportedly paying £59m for each game.

WWE may be scripted sporting entertainment, rather than pure sport, but the tech giant's £3.9bn deal to show the wrestling franchise for the next decade marked another significant move into live events, building on the success it has had with documentaries such as the Formula 1 series Drive to Survive.

So, is it really worth all that money?

As president of TKO - a conglomerate formed by Endeavour as part of a merger between WWE and UFC last year - Shapiro was a key figure behind that deal with Netflix.

"The truth is you're going to have some properties that are challenged. And then you're going to have other sports properties - like you've just seen with the NBA, like you'll always see with the NFL - that are going to be hotter than hot. And WWE fell into that," he told the Leaders sports conference in October.

"Sports right now is the only thing flat-out working across linear and digital. Because it's live, and because of the competition, the rooting history, the equity many of these sports have with their fanbases and different countries and universes and followings.

"So, sports is on its own. It's a unicorn. And that's why you see so many deals where the platforms are putting more and more sports on non-traditional platforms, or putting them in windows that are unorthodox. Sports works, and it is the magic serum. Some will stay hot and some will cool off to warm, but they'll never be less than warm."

With live sport one of the few types of programming that still guarantees reliable audiences on a regular basis amid declining broadcast viewing figures, it appears the demand for such rights from media companies has never been higher.

And despite fears younger viewers are increasingly attracted to gaming, and social media where clips of action can be seen quickly and for free, the latest research actually found live sport makes up a growing proportion of the content they do watch.

Earlier this month, Germany's Bundesliga announced a slight increase for its new £900m-per-season domestic deal.

Elsewhere in European football, however, rights-holders have been facing a struggle.

In France this summer - having failed attract anything like the offers hoped for - the Ligue de Football Professionnel had to accept a last-minute deal reportedly worth £413m per season with DAZN and BeIN, 12% down on the previous one, and 50% less than the 2020-24 cycle.

Italy's Serie A meanwhile, is also in the first year of a domestic deal worth less than the one it replaced.

Some believe this is evidence of a correction after some media companies paid way too much for football rights, but also of a changing market.

"In Europe in the years up to the middle of the 2010s many incumbent pay-TV platforms were challenged by telecom operators" says Godard.

"The BT bids refashioned European football by lifting Premier League revenues above that of their peers. In France, Orange also entered the market, and Deutsche Telekom too in Germany. But in the past 10 years telecoms have scaled down their football ambitions, competitiveness has decreased and rights value has stagnated."

An additional problem, of course, is with Premier League clubs' spending power so much greater - due largely to their vastly superior broadcast deals - continental leagues risk losing their top talent, making the sale of their rights even more challenging.

Other sports have faced difficult decisions over the sale of their rights in a fragmented market.

In August, European rugby union chiefs defended signing a broadcast deal to screen Champions Cup matches on Premier Sports, meaning there will be no terrestrial coverage of the sport's top club competition in England.

The governing body claimed the agreement delivered a financial uplift, but meant fans in England would need to buy a second subscription, with TNT having the rights to show domestic club rugby.

Meanwhile, the latest Sky deal for rugby league's domestic Super League is worth about half per season what the deal between 2017 and 2021 generated.

"The years of tough competition between Sky and BT Sport are over and that has really hurt Super League," says Callum McCarthy, editor of SportBusiness.

"Now, Sky co-exists nicely with TNT Sports [formerly BT Sport]. We haven't seen a genuine bidding war for sport in almost a decade. It's no coincidence that Super League now receives around half as much as it once did.

"There are broader economic trends in the UK that are driving the slowdown in sports rights spending.

"In real terms, the average person's disposable income has not meaningfully grown in about 15 years. Meanwhile, the amount spent - and charged - by subscription broadcasters has doubled since 2010. People simply cannot afford to keep paying more to watch sport, no matter how much they love their team. That's why piracy and illegal IPTV services are growing in popularity."

So what are sports doing to sustain their income from media rights?

Many are innovating; Super League, for instance, will make history in March when Warrington and Wigan Warriors play their opening league fixture in Las Vegas - alongside two matches from Australia's National Rugby League. The NFL has been playing regular-season matches in Europe since 2007, helping to expand its global appeal.