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TVSM GLOBAL REPORT
2017
Published October 2017
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TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 III
CONTENTS
Contents
1 METHODOLOGY
2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
4 THE TOP 10 SPORTS
16 THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
24 THE TOP 10 MARKETS
46 WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2018
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 1
METHODOLOGY
The information in this report has been compiled
using the TVSM Rights Tracker, the intelligence tool
for interrogating TV Sports Markets’ unique database
of sports media rights values. The value of rights
for properties not included in Rights Tracker, and
for upcoming deals not yet announced, has been
either gathered from figures reported in the media or
estimated by the TV Sports Markets team.
The vast majority of the deals we count are
those agreed by the original property, or ‘rights-
holder’, as opposed to the secondary sales market
that agencies work in. In the few cases where the
only value we know for a property is that agreed by
an agency in the secondary market, we have used
those values.
The annual values equate to the total annual
value of media rights deals agreed by the
property, within the sport or within the country
in a calendar year. The rights revenue for
competitions with seasons spanning two calendar
years, such as European football leagues, has
been apportioned to single calendar years. For
example, the total for calendar year 2016 has
been calculated as the average of the 2015-16 and
2016-17 revenue figures.
Rights deal values for periodic events such
as the Olympic Games and Fifa World Cup are
apportioned across the periods between events
rather than to the single year in which the event
is held. For example the value of all deals for the
2018 Fifa World Cup is divided by four to produce
an annual value for the competition in the 2015-
18 period.
Deal values have been converted into US
dollars at the exchange rate on the date of the deal
announcement. The growth rates of properties,
countries and sports are also in many cases based
on figures converted to US dollars, and therefore
are affected by exchange rate fluctuations.
Some historic figures have changed from the
last edition of the report, TVSM Global Report
2016, which looked at the market based on 2016
figures. These changes reflect that, since publication
of the previous report, TV Sports Markets received
new information on some historic contracts, leading
to values changing.
METHODOLOGY
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Executive summary
Total global value of sports media rights ($m)
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
31,42536,321
39,619
43,641 46,975
49,517 51,823 52,903
54,272
The global value of sports media rights was just
under $47bn in 2017, up from $43.6bn in 2016. Year-
on-year growth will continue, with the value of the
market forecast to break the $50bn-barrier in 2019
and reach almost $54.3bn by 2021.
The US remained the largest single market by
rights spend in 2017, at $21.2bn, far outstripping the
second highest-spending market, the UK, which was
on $4.8bn. The order of the top 10 by spend was the
same as last year, with the US and UK preceding:
Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Australia,
Canada and India.
In the period under analysis, 2013 to 2021,
Spain, perhaps surprisingly as one of the European
countries hit hardest by the economic downturn
post-2008, has the fastest-growing rights market,
with a CAGR of 9.1 per cent. India is in second place,
with 8.2 per cent. Canada, on 8.1 per cent, and the
UK on 7.9 per cent, were close behind.
Basketball remains the sport with the fastest
CAGR in the period 2013-2021, at 10.4 per cent.
Football remains second.
The bulk of the value of the rights market is
clustered around a small number of sports, with
football (soccer) accounting for 40 per cent of
global spending on rights in 2017. Football rights
were worth just over $18.8bn in 2017, up from
$17.1bn last year. While esports has probably been
the biggest growth story in terms of the overall
industry in the last two years, it still hardly makes a
blip on the radar of the overall rights market.
There has been little change to the dominance
of the top handful of properties. The NFL remains
out on its own, with a media value of $7.3bn in 2017.
The Premier League remains second, on $4.5bn.
The NBA and MLB complete the top four. The gap
between the MLB in fourth and the Uefa Champions
League in fifth is quite substantial. MLB rights
income is $3.4bn, compared to $2.2bn for Uefa.
The last 18-24 months have been a period when
some strong macro-trends started to emerge. Some
of those trends have not yet had a profound impact
on rights values but look certain to do so in the next
three to five years.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It is arguable that the period 2016-2018 is when
the impact of the so-called Fifa scandal started to
be felt. In the markets most affected by decades of
corrupt deals – the Americas – football rights have
routinely been coming to the market as part of
rigorously transparent tender operations. Opening
the market in a completely fair way to competition
has almost inevitably pushed up the values of the
properties held by Conmebol and Concacaf, the
governing bodies for football across the region.
This year was also probably the year when the
shadow boxing of the big internet companies – like
Facebook and Amazon – gave way to something
more aggressive. Neither landed a KO for a major
property but Facebook showed its muscle with
a $600m (losing) bid for Indian Premier League
cricket rights and Amazon picked up exclusive
rights in the UK to ATP tennis. Next year’s edition
of the global report is likely to feature many more
such deals.
The tentative nature of the entry into the rights
market of the internet giants did not mean OTT as a
delivery option had limited impact. But the impact
came from another source: digital specialists the
Perform Group. Perform’s DAZN premium service
launched with an aggressive rights-buying strategy
in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan and
Canada, and also bid for rights in other territories,
such as Italy. A much wider roll-out is expected.
One of the big questions in the coming years
is whether the premium subscription model
adopted by Amazon and DAZN will allow for
more aggressive spending than the advertising-
funded model of players like YouTube, Twitter and
Facebook. Commercial (i.e. ad-funded) broadcasters
around the world have had trouble keeping up
with pay-TV (subscription-funded) operators. Will
the same dynamic play out in the new landscape?
Or will the highly targeted advertising and data
harvesting of the Silicon Valley players be decisive?
Could a new kind of free-plus-pay model emerge
where social media operators become the new
default free-to-air platforms, and subscription OTT
operators the new normal for pay-TV deals?
The last 18 months have been interesting in
showing how different rights-holders approach
the free vs. pay conundrum. Uefa has increasingly
closed exclusive deals with European pay-television
operators for its flagship property, the Champions
League, and has enjoyed solid growth as a result.
Formula One under Bernie Ecclestone appeared to
be heading down that route but new owners – John
Malone’s Liberty Media – appear to favour a return
to free-to-air coverage to help drive sponsorship
and other commercial revenue.
Liberty’s $4.6bn acquisition of Formula One this
year highlighted another growing trend: media
companies and sports marketing agencies are
increasingly looking to own the IP in sports events,
rather than be part of a risky, short-term rights-
trading game which does not provide sustainable
growth. The IMG agency’s $3.55bn buyout of MMA
promoter UFC in the summer of 2016 and Wanda
Sports’s acquisition of the Ironman triathlon
franchise in 2015 were other high-profile examples.
Another major factor in rights inflation is the
continued battle between the super agencies – the
likes of IMG, MP & Silva, Infront Sports & Media,
Lagardère Sports and the Perform Group. Each
has been prepared to pay very large increases on
previous cycle values to secure top rights. IMG, in
particular, has been aggressive, paying headline-
making numbers to win properties like the FA Cup,
the Copa Libertadores (together with Perform) and
the international rights to Serie A.
Interestingly, where major rights-holders have
run open tenders which allow individual market
bids as well as global bids, they have ended up
opting for a global bid from an agency. This appears
to suggest that agencies are still prepared to pay
a premium that the broadcast market cannot see.
Logic suggests that this should make refinancing
bids very difficult – and there have been examples
of that being the case, even where agencies are
selling premium football rights. But being able to
bundle the rights gives agencies ways to exploit
them that are not open to broadcasters.
And there may be other strategic long-term
reasons why an agency will pay a big premium.
In IMG’s case, for example, it is widely assumed it
will launch an IPO in 2018, which could massively
increase the value of the company.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 4
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
The top 10 sports
Top 10 sports by global media rights value 2017 ($m)
20,000
18,000
16,000
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
Football American football
Basketball Baseball US college sport
Motorsport Ice hockey Golf Multi-sport events
Cricket
Source: TV Sports Markets
18,823
7,302
4,248 3,681 3,038
1,789 1,385 1,179 1,174 981
OverviewThe top 10 sports will generate a combined
$43.6bn from media rights revenue in 2017, a
7.6-per-cent increase on 2016, and are forecast to
top $50bn by 2021.
Nine of the 10 sports will generate over $1bn
in 2017, with cricket rising to that mark in 2018.
Only six sports topped $1bn at the beginning of the
decade.
The top 10 sports accounted for 93 per cent of
global sports rights value in 2017, the same level
as 2016. The total value of the top 10 is forecast
to grow by an average of 7.1 per cent (compound
annual growth rate – CAGR) between 2013 to 2021.
Football is by far the most valuable sport,
generating $18.8bn in 2017, a 9.9-per-cent increase
on 2016, the second fastest growing sport in the
top 10. Football generates 40 per cent of the global
total and 158 per cent more than the second-largest
sport, American football.
Football is forecast to exceed $23.4bn in 2021
and will be worth more than treble the value of
American football by that point. This reflects that
the value of American football is due to remain
relatively similar as its leading broadcast contracts
run until 2021 and 2022.
With the exception of football, US sports
dominate the top 10, with the country’s four big
professional sports and US college sport providing
five of the next seven positions.
In addition, the most valuable property in sixth-
ranked motorsport is the US stock car series Nascar,
which provides 46 per cent of the sport’s value. The
top property in the ninth most valuable sport – golf
– is the US-based PGA Tour, accounting for 54 per
cent of the sport’s total. In total, the US provides the
leading property in seven of the top 10 sports.
Third-largest sport basketball grew by 32 per
cent in 2017, due to the start of the current NBA
rights cycle in the 2016-17 season. Basketball is
forecast to be the fastest-growing among the top 10
between 2013 and 2021 at 10.4 per cent CAGR, the
only sport with double-digit CAGR over the period.
This is due almost entirely to growth in the NBA
rights fees – the property accounts for 93 per cent
of the sport’s total.
At the other end of the scale, ‘multi-sport events’
– which covers the Olympic Games, Asian Games,
Commonwealth Games and other such events – is
the slowest-growing among the top 10 sports at 1.6
per cent CAGR between 2013 and 2021.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 5
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
Top 10 sports – Share of global media rights market 2017
Source: TV Sports Markets
Global market =$47.0bn
American football15.5%
Football40.1%
Others7.2%
Cricket2.1%
Basketball9.0%
US college sport6.5%
Baseball7.8%
Motorsport3.8%
Ice hockey2.9%
Golf2.5%
Multi-sport events2.5%
Top 10 sports – Media rights value growth rate (CAGR) 2013-21
12.0%
10.0%
8.0%
6.0%
4.0%
2.0%
0
Basketball Football Cricket American football
Baseball Motorsport Ice hockey US college sport
Golf Multi-sport events
Source: TV Sports Markets
10.4%
8.2%
7.1% 6.9%6.5%
5.6%4.8%
4.3%
1.9%1.6%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 6
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $18,823m
Share of global value 40.1%
2016-17 growth 9.9%
2013-21 CAGR 8.2%
Most valuable property Premier League ($4,550m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
24%
Football global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
12,481 13,585
14,876
17,133 18,823
20,248 21,719
22,407 23,446
1. Football
Among sports, football is by far the world’s largest
generator of rights fees at $18.8bn in 2017, and is
the second fastest growing sport in the top 10 with
a 9.9-per-cent rise on 2016.
Football provides 40 per cent of the global
market, and generates 158 per cent more rights
revenue than the second-largest sport, American
football.
Football is also the second fastest growing sport
among the top 10 between 2013 and 2021 with
8.2 per cent CAGR. The sport’s share of the global
market is due to increase to 43 per cent by 2021.
The English Premier League is the largest
football property at $4.55bn, more than double the
value of the second-largest, the Uefa Champions
League at $2.2bn.
The Premier League provides 24 per cent of
football’s total value. This is the lowest percentage
accounted for by the most valuable property among
the top 10 sports.
The top seven football properties – the big five
European leagues, the Uefa Champions League and
the Fifa World Cup – are worth $13.1bn, 69 per cent
of the football total. Even excluding these major
properties the remaining football competitions
would be worth $5.8bn – more than the global
value of any sport except American football.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 7
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $7,302m
Share of global value 15.5%
2016-17 growth 0.9%
2013-21 CAGR 6.9%
Most valuable property NFL ($7,302m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
100%
American football global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
8,000
7,000
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
4,400
6,540
7,075 7,239 7,302 7,366 7,386 7,465 7,485
2. American football
The American football total is composed entirely
of the global revenue for the National Football
League. In this report US college American football
is classified under college sports, while indoor
formats (such as the Arena Football League) are
also counted as a separate category.
American football, or the NFL, accounts for
15.5 per cent of the global sports rights market.
The NFL’s rights value is almost entirely generated
by domestic deals in the US.
American football grew by 0.9 per cent in
2017, one of the lowest rates in the top 10. The
low growth rate reflects NFL domestic broadcast
contracts are long term, running until 2021 and
2022. However, as the current domestic contracts
began in 2014, American football will experience
strong growth of 6.9 per cent CAGR over the 2013-
21 period, the fourth-fastest among the top 10.
Unlike the other three US major league sports,
individual NFL franchises do not have significant
local TV contracts.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 8
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $4,248 m
Share of global value 9.0%
2016-17 growth 32.2%
2013-21 CAGR 10.4%
Most valuable property NBA ($3,929m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
93%
Basketball global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
2,019 2,073 2,152
3,213
4,248 4,349 4,418 4,436 4,457
3. Basketball
Basketball overtook baseball to become the world’s
third most valuable sport in 2017 following a
32-per-cent increase on 2016 revenue.
That growth is on the back of a $24bn, nine-year
domestic National Basketball Association (NBA)
deal with Time Warner and ABC/ESPN, announced
in October 2014 and starting in the 2016-17 season.
Basketball’s value is dominated by the NBA,
which provides 93 per cent of its global total in
2017.
Basketball does not include US college
basketball competitions which in this report are
counted as part of US college sport (see the fifth-
largest sport).
Some other leading basketball competitions
signed major, long-term deals, although these are
of relatively small value.
In February 2016, the International Basketball
Federation (Fiba) signed a $540m deal with the
Perform Group covering international basketball
events between 2017 to 2033, including four World
Cups, continental competitions and qualifying
matches.
In November 2015, Europe’s premier club
competition Euroleague agreed a 10-season joint
venture with agency IMG covering all aspects of the
business: media rights, digital rights, sponsorship,
licensing, ticketing and merchandising. The joint
venture will run from 2016-17 to 2025-26, with the
option of being extended for a further 10 seasons.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 9
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $3,681m
Share of global value 7.8%
2016-17 growth 3.7%
2013-21 CAGR 6.5%
Most valuable property MLB ($3,417m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
93%
Baseball global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
2,341
3,270 3,426
3,553 3,681 3,738 3,790 3,854 3,883
4. Baseball
Baseball is the fourth most valuable sport at $3.7bn
in 2017, having been overtaken by basketball this
year.
As with other US major league sports, baseball’s
US league is by far the biggest property, with Major
League Baseball (MLB) providing 93 per cent of the
sport’s global value.
Baseball media-rights revenue grew strongly
in 2014 thanks to the start of new MLB domestic
deals with broadcasters Turner Broadcasting, Fox
and ESPN. These were renewals and each was
more than double the value of the previous deal.
Together, they are worth $1.5bn per year.
The other baseball properties – including
Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, Korea’s KBO
League and the Taiwan-based Chinese Professional
Baseball League – are worth a combined $264m in
2017.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 10
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $3,038m
Share of global value 6.5%
2016-17 growth 2.2%
2013-21 CAGR 4.3%
Most valuable property NCAA ($810m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
27%
US college sport global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
2,274
2,539 2,866 2,973
3,038 3,155 3,175 3,197 3,204
5. US college sport
This ‘sport’ covers US university sports competitions,
including American football, basketball and ice
hockey. It will generate $3bn in 2017, a 2.2-per-cent
increase on 2016.
Unlike the big four US major league sports,
US college sport is not dependent on a single
competition for the majority of its revenue. The
sport’s leading property, a package of rights sold by
the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA),
provides 26.6 per cent of the total. The NCAA
package is the 13th-most valuable global property.
The total is also driven by the rights for a
number of large conferences (regional groups
of universities that compete against each other)
and national championships, seven of which will
generate over $200m in 2017.
As with other US rights deals, the largest
contracts are long-term, running until the mid
2020s. The current NCAA deal runs for 14 years,
to 2024, while the next six largest deals run until
between 2023-27.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 11
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $1,789m
Share of global value 3.8%
2016-17 growth 0.6%
2013-21 CAGR 5.6%
Most valuable property Nascar ($824m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
46%
Motorsport global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,305 1,361
1,689 1,779 1,789 1,850
2,018 2,019 2,022
6. Motorsport
Motorsport grew by 0.6 per cent to $1.8bn in 2017.
The sport is dominated by two properties, which
provide 86 per cent of the total.
US series Nascar is the leading motorsport
property with an annual value of $824m, the total
being almost entirely derived from the domestic
market.
The other property, Formula One, is due to
become the most valuable motorsport property in
2019 with the beginning of a new six-year deal with
Sky in the UK worth $254m per year.
In 2017, Formula One generates seven times
the media-rights revenue of the third-largest
motorsport property, motorcycling series MotoGP.
Motorsport is growing at 5.6 per cent CAGR
over 2013-21, with most of the growth coming
from Formula One. Nascar’s value won’t change
much in the period as, like other US sports, its main
broadcast contracts are long-term, in this case
running to 2024.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 12
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $1,385m
Share of global value 2.9%
2016-17 growth 2.0%
2013-21 CAGR 4.8%
Most valuable property NHL ($1,186m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
86%
Ice hockey global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,016 1,192
1,360 1,358 1,385
1,438 1,458 1,470 1,476
7. Ice hockey
In 2015, ice hockey moved up to seventh place in
the top 10 sports, overtaking multi-sport events,
with the start of a major new deal in Canada.
As with the other big American professional
sports, the total is almost entirely based on the
North American domestic league, with the National
Hockey League’s $1.2bn media-rights income in
2017 accounting for 86 per cent of the ice hockey
total.
However, unlike the other major American
leagues, in the NHL most of the value comes from
Canada. In November 2013, broadcaster Rogers
Communications agreed to pay $5bn in a 12-year
deal for NHL rights, Canada’s largest ever rights
deal and more than double the amount paid for
NHL rights in the US.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 13
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $1,174m
Share of global value 2.5%
2016-17 growth 0.6%
2013-21 CAGR 1.6%
Most valuable property Olympic Games ($1,153m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
98%
Multi-sport events global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,141 1,141 1,167 1,167 1,174 1,174 1,174 1,174
1,292
8. Multi-sport events
The multi-sport competitions total is almost entirely
from the Olympic Games. Olympics media rights
revenue has been divided over four-year ‘Olympic
cycles’, each covering one Winter Olympics and one
Summer Olympics.
The Olympic Games account for 98 per cent of
the multi-sport total, with the balance from events
such as the Asian Games and the Commonwealth
Games.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 14
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $1,179m
Share of global value 2.5%
2016-17 growth 3.0%
2013-21 CAGR 1.9%
Most valuable property PGA Tour ($638m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of sport
54%
Golf global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
1,250
1,200
1,150
1,100
1,050
1,000
950
900
850
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,050 1,050
1,140 1,145
1,179 1,189 1,190
1,221 1,221
9. Golf
Golf media rights generated $1.2bn in 2017, a 3-per-
cent increase on 2016.
Golf’s value is driven by the US PGA Tour, which
generated $638m in 2017, 54 per cent of the sport’s
annual value. The four major tournaments – The
Masters, The Open, the PGA Championship and the
US Open – were worth a combined $363m, 31 per
cent of the sport’s total value.
Golf is the second-slowest-growing sport in the
top 10, with a compound annual growth rate of 1.9
per cent between 2013 and 2021.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 15
THE TOP 10 SPORTS
2017 market value $981m
Share of global value 2.1%
2016-17 growth 0.1%
2013-21 CAGR 7.1%
Most valuable property ICC ($263m in 2017)
Most valuable property's share of sport
27%
Cricket global media rights value 2013-21 ($m)
1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
950 916
949 980 981
1,471 1,516 1,638 1,639
10. Cricket
Cricket is due to break the $1bn revenue mark in
2018 with the start of the new $510m-per-year
Indian Premier League global rights contract.
Unlike most other sports in the top 10, no
single event drives the global cricket total. In 2015,
International Cricket Council (ICC) events overtook
Cricket Australia events to become the most
valuable property in the sport, accounting for over a
quarter of the total. However, the new IPL deal will
be around double the value of the ICC rights.
Five cricket properties – the packages sold by
the ICC, Cricket Australia, IPL, Board of Control for
Cricket in India, and England and Wales Cricket
Board – generate over $100m per year, and are
worth a combined $839m in 2017. That equates to
86 per cent of the sport’s total value, up from 77 per
cent in 2014.
Following the IPL deal, cricket is the joint-fourth-
fastest-growing sport in the top 10, with a 7.1-per-
cent CAGR over 2013-21.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 16
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
The top 20 properties
Top 20 properties by global media rights value 2017 ($m)
Source: TV Sports Markets
7,302
4,550
3,929
3,417
2,196
1,853
1,545
1,186
1,153
1,115
1,046
824
810
766
709
638
536
470
465
413
NFL
English Premier League
NBA
MLB
Uefa Champions League
LaLiga
Serie A
NHL
Olympics
Bundesliga 1
Ligue 1
Nascar
NCAA
Fifa World Cup
Formula One
PGA Tour
Brazilian Série A
College football play-offs
Turkish Super Lig
Uefa European Championship
Overview Global sports media rights value is highly
concentrated in a small number of the most
popular properties. The top 20 properties account
for $34.9bn in 2017, an 8 per cent increase on 2016.
The top 20 properties account for 74 per cent of the
global total.
The major properties are drawn from two main
categories: US-based properties and football.
The massive value of the US market is underlined
by its eight entries in the top 20, down from nine
in 2016, which will generate $18.6bn in 2017, 40
per cent of the global total. The US entries rely on
their domestic market for the vast majority of their
income. Properties like US college sport events
and Nascar have limited appeal internationally
compared to the top European football leagues,
Formula One or the Olympic Games.
Football is the dominant sport among the
top properties, accounting for ten of the top 20,
one more than in 2016, and worth a combined
$14.5bn, 31 per cent of the total global value.
European football in particular is the driver, with
six properties – the ‘big five’ European leagues plus
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 17
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
Share of global market 2017
Source: TV Sports Markets
Share of global market value 2017 – property groupings
Source: TV Sports Markets
Global total =
$47.0bn Properties 1-1060.1%
Other properties 12.2%
Properties 11-2014.2%
Properties 21-306.3%
Properties 31-404.2%
Properties 41-503.0%
the Uefa Champions League – in the top 11, worth
a combined $12.3bn. In addition the Uefa European
Championship is a new entry as the twentieth
largest property.
Outside American sports and football,
the properties that make the top 20 are from
motorsport, golf and the multi-sport Olympic
Games. Cricket is due to make its debut in the top
20 in 2018 with start of the Indian Premier League’s
new $510m-per-year, five-year global rights deal
with Star India.
The NFL’s lead as the world’s most valuable
property is so great – it’s worth 15.5 per cent of the
global value of sports media rights in 2017 – that
it won’t be threatened soon. However, the lead
has been diminished by growth among the chasing
Global total =
$47.0bn
NFL15.5%
English Premier League9.7%
NBA8.4%
Others39.9%
MLB7.3%
Uefa Champions League4.7%
LaLiga3.9%
Serie A3.3%
Olympics2.5%
Bundesliga 12.4%
NHL2.5%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 18
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
Top 20 properties CAGR 2013-18
Source: TV Sports Markets
17.4%
16.2%
16.1%
14.0%
11.9%
10.6%
10.9%
7.5%
7.4%
7.0%
6.1%
5.7%
5.5%
4.6%
3.7%
2.9%
0.6%
0.6%
0.0%
NBA
LaLiga
Bundesliga 1
English Premier League
Uefa Champions League
NFL
MLB
Nascar
Formula One
NHL
Uefa European Championship
Turkish Super Lig
Serie A
Fifa World Cup
Ligue 1
Brazilian Série A
PGA Tour
Olympics
NCAA
pack, in particular the English Premier League,
which has become the second-most valuable
property and is worth 62 per cent of the NFL’s value
in 2017.
Three other properties each account for 7 per
cent or more of the global total – the Premier
League, the NBA and the MLB. The top 10 are
worth over four times the value of the 11th-20th
properties, which in turn are worth more than
double the 21st-30th properties.
The NBA will be the fastest-growing in the 2013-
18 period examined in this report, with 17.4 per cent
CAGR, 1 percentage point more than the second
fastest growing property, Spain’s LaLiga (16.2 per
cent).
Five other properties have double-digit CAGR
in the period: the German Bundesliga 1 (16.1 per
cent), the Premier League (14.0 per cent), the Uefa
Champions League (11.9 per cent), the NFL (10.9 per
cent) and MLB (10.6 per cent).
In the following section the top 10 properties are
looked at in more detail. The number in brackets
next to each property headline indicates its position
in TVSM Global Report 2016.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 19
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
1. NFL (last year’s position = 1st)
The NFL is by far the largest generator of media
rights revenue among the world’s sports properties,
courtesy of being the most popular property in
the world’s biggest consumer market. The league
derives almost all its $7.3bn annual rights income
from its domestic market.
NFL rights values leapt by 49 per cent in 2014
due to new long-term deals with broadcasters
CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN, and telco Verizon. They
increased again in 2015 due to a new deal with pay-
television platform DirecTV.
The Thursday Night Football slot, launched in
2006, has contributed to growth, with its television
rights revenue increasing to $450m per season for
2016 and 2017, 50 per cent up on its revenue in
2015. The NFL also achieved a reported five-fold
increase in the value of the slot’s digital rights in a
$50m deal with Amazon covering 2017.
Most NFL deals are long term, so big changes in
its rights income are not expected for several years.
The CBS, Fox, NBC and DirecTV deals run to the
end of the 2022 season, and the ESPN deal to 2021.
But there is likely to be some change in 2018, as
Verizon’s $250m-per-year deal for mobile streaming
rights ends in 2017.
2. Premier League (2)
Domestic media-rights values have soared over
the last two rights cycles following the arrival
of BT Sport in the UK pay-television market as
a challenger to long-standing Premier League
broadcaster Sky.
Domestic rights value hit £5.136bn for the three
seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19, a 70-per-cent
increase on the value of the rights in the previous
cycle, from 2013-14 to 2015-16. This followed a
similar increase from the cycle before.
The Premier League is very much a global
property, and earns close to $1.8bn per season from
international rights revenue in the 2016-17 to 2018-
19 cycle. International rights revenue accounts for
about 40 per cent of the Premier League’s total.
The domestic and international deals cement
the league’s position as the most valuable media
rights property in football, and strengthen the
financial muscle of its clubs in comparison with
their rivals in other European leagues.
The league is expected to offer its domestic
media rights to the market late this year and
conclude a new set of deals in February 2018 for the
2019-20 to 2021-22 cycle.
Some international deals have already been
struck for the new cycle: in Brazil, China, sub-
Saharan Africa and the US.
NFL media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
8,000
7,000
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
4,400
6,540 7,075 7,239 7,302 7,366
Premier League media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
5,000
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
2,368
2,965 2,965
3,758
4,550 4,550
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 20
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
MLB media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
2,094
3,0103,164
3,2903,417 3,468
NBA media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,800 1,847 1,922
2,939
3,930 4,014
3. NBA (4)
The National Basketball Association’s global
media-rights revenue increased by $1bn between
2016 and 2017, reaching $3.9bn this year. This is
due to 2017 being the first full calendar year of the
NBA’s latest round of domestic rights deals, that
started running in the 2016-17 season. The deals,
agreed in 2014 with Turner and The Walt Disney
Company, generated an increase of around 180 per
cent in domestic rights income. They are long-term
agreements, running nine seasons to 2024-25.
As with Major League Baseball, NBA teams have
regional deals with local broadcasters. The values
of these deals vary hugely. At the top end, the deals
are worth $100m per season or more, with the
Los Angeles Lakers deal with Time Warner Cable
reported in US media to be worth up to $200m per
season. Such income is the exception rather than
the rule, however, and 15 of the 30 franchises will
earn $20m or less. Many regional deals are long
term, with some expiring after 2030.
In total, NBA teams are estimated to earn about
$868m from regional deals in 2017, compared to
$2.7bn for the nationwide deals.
4. MLB (3)
Major League Baseball will earn $1.65bn in 2017
from four nationwide US deals, with ESPN, Fox,
Turner and DirecTV. The league’s income from
nationwide – as opposed to regional – deals will
not change dramatically for several years. The Fox,
Turner and ESPN deals all run to 2021.
The current rights cycle, with deals beginning in
the 2014 season, brought major rights fee increases.
ESPN’s fees increased by 136 per cent, Fox’s by 104
per cent, and Turner’s by 120 per cent.
In addition to the nationwide deals, MLB teams
have individual regional contracts with local
broadcasters. Regional deals for the 30 franchises
are worth an estimated total of $1.7bn in 2017, an
8-per-cent increase on 2016, and provide 50 per
cent of the MLB’s total media rights value.
Regional deals are typically longer-term than
nationwide deals – some run for over 25 years,
compared to the eight-year contracts with ESPN,
Fox and Turner. In some cases, instead of selling
their rights the teams have a stake in a broadcaster
and receive a yearly income from it. An example is
the New York Yankees’ deal with the Yes Network.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 21
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
LaLiga media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
2,000
1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
912 925
1,220
1,680
1,853 1,934
Uefa Champions League media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,504 1,504
1,850
2,196 2,196
2,636
5. UCL (5)
Most of the Champions League’s income is
generated in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and
the UK – Europe’s big five economies and football
leagues. The property also has strong appeal in sub-
Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Champions League rights are sold by Uefa
simultaneously with rights to its second-tier sister
competition the Europa League.
In its new rights cycle, from 2018-19 to 2020-21,
Uefa has agreed deals for both competitions in
four of the big five European markets. Competition
between pay-television broadcasters helped it
secure particularly strong growth in France and
Spain. It also secured an increase of almost 200 per
cent in the value of both competitions (jointly-sold)
in the Middle East and North Africa.
Uefa’s recent success in securing big fee
increases in Europe, the Middle East, and also the
US, together with the competition’s cachet and
growing popularity in developing pay-television
markets, looks to ensure future rights fee growth.
6. LaLiga (6)
Domestically, LaLiga generates just over €1bn per
season in its 2016-17 to 2018-19 rights cycle, in
deals with pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports
and telcos Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange. It also
has some smaller deals with the Mediapro agency.
LaLiga earns about €650m per season from
international rights in a cycle running from 2015-
16 to 2017-18. This was a 177-per-cent increase on
what it earned in the cycle from 2012-13 to 2014-15.
The growth in international rights value was
driven by a number of factors, including the
continuing global appeal of the league’s top teams
and stars, and kick-off times being rescheduled to
better suit international audiences. Outside Spain,
the league is most valuable in the US, the Middle
East and North Africa, Southeast Asia, China, France,
and Latin America.
From 2015-16 onwards, our figures for LaLiga
include the value of rights for Spain’s second-tier
league, the Segunda División, as they began to be
sold simultaneously. To give an indication of their
comparative value, in 2014-15 Segunda División
global rights were worth about 7 per cent of the
value of the top division’s global rights.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 22
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
NHL media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
853
1,018 1,180
1,178 1,186 1,199
Serie A media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,303 1,329 1,4431,545
1,545
1,700
7. Serie A (7)
Serie A is Italy’s main pay-television subscription-
driving property. Competition for domestic rights
between the market’s two main pay-television
broadcasters, Sky Italia and Mediaset Premium, has
driven up their value. Serie A global rights revenue
topped $1.5bn in 2017, including domestic deals
worth $1.3bn.
Some of this income is paid to agency Infront
Sports & Media, which sells the rights on the
league’s behalf under a deal running until 2020-21.
Serie A international rights revenues will double
to just over €370m per season in the next cycle,
2018-19 to 2020-21, under new deals with the IMG
agency and Italian state broadcaster Rai.
Serie A has not enjoyed the big percentage leaps
in domestic revenues in recent cycles that some
other European leagues have. Until the beginning
of 2017, the prospects of a big increase for the
next cycle did not look good either. Mediaset
Premium’s heavy losses appeared to leave Sky with
an overly powerful position in the market. However,
new players such as Canale + and OTT service
DAZN, together with a more aggressive approach
by Discovery, appear to offer greater hopes of
competition. The rights tender is expected before
the end of the year.
8. NHL (8)
The NHL is unique among the North American
major league sports in drawing the majority of its
revenue from outside the US. In the NHL’s case,
rights in Canada account for 51 per cent of revenue,
with the US market accounting for 48 per cent.
Canada’s lead position is due to a nationwide
deal with telco Rogers Communications worth
$417m per year, more than double the $200m paid
by Comcast-NBCU for the US rights.
The US and Canada nationwide deals are both
long-term, until 2020-21 and 2025-26, respectively.
So NHL central rights income will not change
dramatically in the near future.
In addition to the nationwide deals, NHL teams
have regional deals. US teams account 66 per cent
of the estimated combined regional value of $554m
in 2017 because 23 of the 30 teams in the league
are based there.
NHL rights fees are almost entirely supplied by
the two domestic North American markets, with
international revenue accounting for just 1.3 per
cent of the total value.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 23
THE TOP 20 PROPERTIES
Bundesliga media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
639762
821 880
1,115
1,350
Olympics media rights values 2013-18 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,120 1,1201,146 1,146 1,153 1,153
9. Olympics (10)
We have annualised the value of all Olympics
deals over a four-year Olympics cycle – the typical
time period for which the International Olympic
Committee agrees deals, covering one winter
Games and one summer Games.
It’s worth remembering that the Olympics
delivers a total of just over two weeks of television
content every two years – taking into account
both the winter Games and the summer Games –
compared to the hundreds or thousands of hours
provided annually by some of the other properties
on this list.
The US is by far the biggest market for Olympics
rights, currently accounting for nearly 50 per cent of
the property’s total media-rights value.
Outside the US, the event generates decent
rights fees comparable to other sports properties in
almost every advanced media market, including a
€1.3bn pan-European deal with Eurosport covering
the four games between 2018 and 2024, as well as
valuable deals in Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea,
and across the Middle East and North Africa.
10. Bundesliga 1 (11)
Germany’s Bundesliga 1 will earn $1.1bn in media
rights revenues in 2017, up 27 per cent on 2016 due
to the beginning of a new cycle of domestic and
international deals. Income will jump again in 2018,
the first full calendar year of the new cycle.
The league has agreed domestic rights deals
covering Bundesliga 1 and the second-tier
Bundesliga 2 worth €1.16bn per season, from 2017-
18 to 2020-21. In this report, the value allocated
to Bundesliga 1 is calculated as 80 per cent of
the domestic total, based on information that this
was the split in previous cycles. Pay-television
broadcaster Sky Deutschland has the lion’s share
of the rights, paying €876m per season for live
coverage of most Bundesliga 1 matches and all
Bundesliga 2 matches.
International revenues in the cycle will generate
about another €240m per season. The league’s
rights are valuable in neighbouring Austria and
Switzerland, where Sky and Eurosport have ‘mirror
packages’ to their domestic deals. The league
also has a lucrative deal in the Middle East and
North Africa with pay-television broadcaster beIN
Sports, and a 31-territory agreement with the MP &
Silva agency covering Central and Eastern Europe,
Eurasia, the Nordics and Portugal.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 24
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
The top 10 markets
Top 10 markets by media rights spend 2017 ($m)
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0.0
US UK Italy France Germany Spain Brazil Australia Canada Indian subcontinent
Source: TV Sports Markets
21,222
4,844 2,269 2,234 1,883 1,227 1,707 1,112 940 782
OverviewThe US is by far the largest sports media rights
market in the world with a value of $21.2bn in 2017,
a 6.5-per-cent increase on 2016. The US provides
45 per cent of global sports media rights value and
is over four times the size of the second-largest
market, the UK.
The UK is the second fastest growing market in
2017 with a 14.3-per-cent increase to $4.8bn. The
UK accounts for 10 per cent of the global market
and is more than twice the size of the third-largest
market, Italy. The big five European markets occupy
the second to sixth places with a combined value
of $13bn, up 11 per cent on 2016, and account for
28 per cent of the global value. The order of the top
ten markets remains unchanged from 2016.
The US and European sports media markets
have different drivers. The European markets are
mainly driven by pay-television operators, with all
having at least two competing platforms. In the US,
nationwide free-to-air networks compete strongly
with each other and pay-television for premium
rights.
Eight of the top 10 markets are worth over
$1bn, with India due to pass that mark in 2018 on
the back of new deal for cricket’s Indian Premier
League, worth $485m per year domestically from
2018 to 2022.
The global market is dominated by the top 10
markets, with the rest of the world only accounting
for 19 per cent of global media rights value,
equating to $8.7bn.
Spain is the fastest-growing market over the
2013-21 period with a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 9.1 per cent – 0.9 percentage points
more than second fastest growing territory India.
Per capita, the UK pays proportionally the most
for media rights among the 10 largest markets,
at $73.21 in 2017 – 12 per cent more than the US.
Within Europe, the UK is paying 90 per cent more
per capita than Italy and over three times more
than Germany.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 25
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Share of global media rights value 2017
Source: TV Sports Markets
Global total =
$47.0bn
US45.2%
Others18.6%
UK10.3%
France4.8%
Italy4.8%
Germany4.0%
Indian subcontinent1.7%
Canada2.0%
Australia2.4%
Brazil2.6%
Spain3.7%
Media rights value growth rate (CAGR) 2013-21
12.0%
10.0%
8.0%
6.0%
4.0%
2.0%
0.0%
Spain Indian subcontinent
Canada UK Germany US France Australia Italy Brazil
Source: TV Sports Markets
9.1%
8.2% 8.1%7.9%
7.2% 6.7%
5.7%
4.2%3.7%
2.4%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 26
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Top 10 markets - media rights spend per per capita 2017 ($)
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
UK US Australia Italy Spain France Canada Germany Brazil Indian subcontinent
Source: TV Sports Markets
73.21
65.39
45.51
38.2236.77
25.66
34.39
22.96
5.87
0.45
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 27
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
US sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
13,385
16,724
18,429 19,934
21,222 21,626 22,106 22,292 22,480
1. US
The US is by far the world’s most valuable sports
media-rights market, due to its world-leading
economy and highly developed television and
commercial sports industries.
The market is home of four of the world’s ten
most-valuable properties, headed by American
football’s National Football League, which derives
virtually all of its rights income – which will total
$7.22bn in 2017 – from its domestic market. The
three other properties are: basketball’s NBA ($3.9bn
in global rights revenue), Major League Baseball
($3.4bn), and ice hockey’s NHL ($1.2bn), ranked
third, fourth and eighth, respectively.
As with the NFL, the MLB and NBA derive the
vast majority of revenue from their domestic
market.
The exception is the NHL, where the majority
of rights revenue comes from Canada and the US
accounts for 48 per cent.
Alongside the leagues’ nationwide rights
deals, individual teams in the MLB, NBA and NHL
have regional deals that generate large revenues
– approximately $1,7bn, $855m and $365m
respectively in the US in 2017.
The NFL’s only regional deals are for pre-
season games, comprising a small fraction of the
overall value. This is due to the relatively small
number of games in the competition – 267 regular
season games per year, compared to over 1,300
each for the NBA and NHL, and 2,400 for the MLB.
Nationwide broadcasters snap up the rights for all
NFL regular season and post-season games, but
only acquire rights to the most high-profile games
from the other leagues, leaving plenty of games for
regional operators.
In addition to the big four leagues, the US is
unique for the huge value of its university sport –
‘college sport’ – media rights, worth about $3bn in
2017.
Three other properties generate over $500m
per year in rights fees – the Olympics (annualised
figure), Nascar motor racing and PGA Tour golf.
The US sports rights market is driven by
competition between a relatively large number
2017 market value $21,222m
2017 market value per capita $65.39
Share of global market 45.2%
2016-17 growth 6.5%
2013-21 CAGR 6.7%
Most valuable property NFL ($7,221m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
34.0%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 28
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
of well-funded nationwide free-to-air and pay-
television broadcasters. Unlike many other
developed media markets, commercial free-to-air
broadcasters remain major sports broadcasters
thanks to the massive US television advertising
market. The four main players are ABC, CBS, Fox
and NBC, all of which are in some way aligned with
pay-television – either by owning their own pay-
television channels (e.g. NBC’s sports pay-television
channel NBCSN), or as sister companies in bigger
media groups (e.g. the Disney-ABC Television Group
owns ABC and ESPN, among other channels).
After decades of strong growth, the US sports
media rights market is entering a period of
uncertainty, driven by the rise of new digital media
services and changing media consumption habits.
The traditional pay-television market appears
to be at saturation point, or in decline. Nielsen
estimates that ESPN has lost 13 million subscribers
since 2011 (leaving it at 87 million households).
Increasing numbers of households are opting for
cheaper, OTT TV services or ‘skinny’ pay-TV bundles,
as opposed to the big, expensive channel bundles
that traditionally prevailed in the market. Younger
people are spending less time watching linear TV.
Against these headwinds, new players from the
internet and tech industries look set to enter the
market, potentially bringing inflationary pressure
on sports rights fees. To acquire NFL Thursday
Night Football digital rights in 2017, Amazon paid
five times what Twitter paid in 2016. Facebook and
Apple have announced plans to invest heavily in TV
content, although seem to be focusing mostly on
drama and entertainment for the moment.
This looming disruption is making the long-term
deals for major properties agreed by broadcasters
at the last points of sale look wise. The NFL has four
deals running to 2022-23. MLB nationwide deals
run until 2021. NBC’s NHL agreement lasts until
2020-21. Rights for Nascar, the Olympic Games and
the PGA Tour are also locked up in deals until the
2020s. It will be a number of years yet before new
players can get their hands on the crown jewels of
US sports TV.
Nevertheless, the US sports media landscape
is changing rapidly, and what will happen in the
coming years is harder to foresee than it has been
for some time.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 29
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
UK sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
7,000
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
2,830
3,201 3,467
4,238
4,844 4,946 5,082 5,156 5,204
2. UK
Growth in the UK market in recent years has been
mainly due to competition between pay-television
broadcasters Sky and BT Sport.
Market value is dominated by the English
Premier League, the second most valuable property
globally, which is worth more than £1.8bn per
season in the UK. The Premier League’s current
deals with BT and Sky expire at the end of the 2018-
19 season, and rights for its next cycle are expected
on the market late this year or early next year.
The Uefa Champions League is the second-most
valuable property in the country. BT holds these
rights exclusively in a three-season deal, from 2015-
16 to 2017-18, worth €362.5m per season. BT in
March this year extended its deal for three seasons,
from 2018-19 to 2020-21, for €456m per season.
The English Football League is currently the
third-most valuable property in the market. Sky’s
current deal finishes at the end of 2018-19. In July,
the EFL opted to take the rights to market early,
rather than trigger an extension with Sky covering
2019-20. In September it agreed a £600m, five-
season deal with Sky: an increase of 36 per cent.
After football, the biggest-earning sports are
cricket, Formula One, rugby union, and golf. The top
properties in these sports have steadily migrated
from free-to-air television to pay-television over the
last 20 years as Sky has grown, and as its rivals have
attempted to compete.
Rights-fee growth for pay-television
subscription-driving properties looks set to
continue thanks to the Sky-BT battle, although
there are signs this is cooling. Growth for free-to-
air properties like the Fifa World Cup and Uefa
European Championship has slowed or stalled,
because listed-events legislation prevents pay-
television broadcasters acquiring matches in either
competition on an exclusive basis.
Sky, launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1990, is the
leading sports broadcaster in the market. Rival BT
represents its toughest challenge to date. Before
BT, ESPN and Setanta Sports tried and failed to
establish rival UK pay-TV businesses.
2017 market value $4,844m
2017 market value per capita $73.21
Share of global market 10.3%
2016-17 growth 14.3%
2013-21 CAGR 7.9%
Most valuable property Premier League ($2,783m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
57.5%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 30
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Extraordinary rights-fee growth spurred by
Sky vs. BT competition is only now, more than five
years after BT first acquired Premier League rights,
beginning to slow.
The Premier League earned a 63-per-cent
increase in February 2015 when it sold its rights in
the current 2016-17 to 2018-19 cycle, following a
similar increase in the previous rights cycle. These
were huge percentage increases for an established
and already highly-valuable property.
Formula One will receive a 140-percent uplift in
rights value from 2019 when it moves exclusively to
Sky, and this summer the England & Wales Cricket
Board secured a 129-per-cent fee increase in the
value of its media rights in a deal with Sky and
public-service broadcaster the BBC.
But the recent EFL deal suggests that the era
of huge increases is coming to a close. All eyes are
now on how the Premier League fares in its coming
auction.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 31
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Italy sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,904 1,939 2,094
2,233 2,269 2,345 2,424 2,429
2,541
3. Italy
Italy is the second-largest market in Europe after
the UK, and the third-biggest in the world. The
value of the market is largely driven by competition
between leading pay-television broadcasters Sky
Italia and Mediaset Premium for rights to the
domestic football league, Serie A. Worth over
$1.3bn per season, the league’s rights accounted for
58 per cent of the total value of the market in 2017.
Outside Serie A, football continues to dominate
the list of most valuable rights. The Uefa Champions
League, the second most important pay-television
subscription-driver, is the second most valuable
property.
Serie A’s decision to make its rights available
to both Sky and Mediaset shifted the focus of the
rights battle to the Champions League. In 2017,
Sky won the rights to the competition back from
Mediaset – and retained the Europa League – giving
it a total grip on top European club football for the
period 2018-19 to 2021, in a deal worth €300m per
season.
Strong rights fees are also commanded by
national team football – including the Fifa World
Cup, Uefa European Championship, and national
team qualifiers and friendlies.
Outside football, the most valuable properties
are Formula One, the Olympics and MotoGP. Sky
has invested heavily in motorsport, agreeing deals
for Formula One and MotoGP worth $89m and
$24m per year respectively for 2016.
Since the launch of Sky (from the merger of
Telepiù and Stream) in 2003 and of Mediaset
Premium the following year, the underlying tectonic
plates of the market have been largely unchanged:
Sky and Mediaset compete for premium content,
especially top football, while Rai picks up events
which focus on national teams in various sports.
Rai has become increasingly reluctant to pay large
rights fees, even where Italian teams are involved.
In the period from mid-2016 to mid-2017, there
were signs that this could all be about to change.
In the last quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of
2018, the conditions exist for a radical shake-up of
the market through a combination of new players
2017 market value $2,269m
2017 market value per capita $38.22
Share of global market 4.8%
2016-17 growth 1.6%
2013-21 CAGR 3.7%
Most valuable property Serie A ($1,312m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
57.8%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 32
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
entering and existing players creating strategic
alliances or just becoming more aggressive, as live
sport becomes more valuable in a fragmenting
media landscape.
Significant developments include:
• the creation of a joint venture between Telecom
Italia and Vivendi-owned Canal Plus to create a
new sports and entertainment platform, Canale +.
• Discovery becoming more aggressive in the
market and going after second-tier rights
previously held by either Sky or sports channel
Fox, such as domestic and European basketball.
The combination of the Eurosport and DMAX
channels, and the Eurosport Player, provides a
combination of free/pay/OTT which is attractive
to rights-holders.
• Perform’s DAZN OTT service identifying Italy as
a key market for future expansion, and bidding –
unsuccessfully so far – for a range of properties
including Serie A and the Uefa Europa League.
• Andrea Radrizzani’s Eleven Sports operation
acquiring the Sportube OTT service and picking up
the rights to three live Serie A matches per week.
At the time of writing, the rights to the Fifa World
Cup and Uefa’s European Qualifiers and Nations
League packages were on the market, with strong
competition between Sky, Mediaset and Rai being
reported.
In the final months of 2017 or in early 2018, the
rights to Formula One and MotoGP and Serie B are
due to come to the market – all properties which
have been critical to Sky’s successful attempt to stem
subscriber losses over the last two to three years.
The real litmus test of the health of the market
will be the sale of the domestic rights to Serie A,
expected in November or December. The league
auctioned its domestic rights in June but had to
retreat with its tail between its legs after receiving
low bids from several players and no bid at all from
Mediaset Premium.
Despite having taken a grip on European club
football, Sky needs to hold on to Serie A. Having
lost the Champions League, Mediaset cannot afford
to also lose Serie A. Eurosport and DAZN are likely
to bid. The big digital players such as Amazon and
Facebook are likely to evaluate a bid. The critical
question, however, is what Canale + does.
At the time of writing, it was unclear whether
the joint venture would compete head on with the
struggling Mediaset Premium or seek to merge with
it. If the latter, it would create a powerful rival to
Sky. If the former, it could push Sky and Mediaset
back to the table to renew failed merger talks.
Either way, the Vivendi-Telecom axis looks like
bringing a dynamism to the rights market which has
been missing for three to four years.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 33
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
France sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,765 1,844 1,927
2,099 2,234 2,348 2,457
2,594
2,758
4. France
France is an extremely dynamic sports media
market with five main players – public-service
broadcaster France Télévisions, commercial
broadcaster TF1, and pay-television broadcasters
beIN Sports, Canal Plus and SFR Sport.
The most popular sports in the country are
football and rugby union. The domestic football
league, Ligue 1, is by far the most valuable media
rights property at €738m per season, almost four
times the current value of the second-placed Uefa
Champions League, worth €148m per season.
There is also strong interest and rights value in
two blue-riband events hosted in the country – the
French Open tennis grand slam and the Tour de
France cycle race.
Canal Plus has been the dominant sports
broadcaster in France for many years, although in
recent years it has come under increasing pressure:
firstly from Qatari-owned broadcaster beIN Sports,
and more recently from SFR Sport, owned by telco
Altice.
In response to losing properties to beIN Sports,
which launched in 2011, Canal Plus switched its
focus to premium domestic properties such as Ligue
1 and the Top 14 domestic club rugby union league.
Canal Plus and beIN Sports currently share
rights to the two most important pay-television
subscription-driving properties – Ligue 1 and the
Champions League – in deals running until the end
of 2019-20 and 2017-18, respectively.
In May SFR Sport rocked the market by acquiring
exclusive Uefa Champions League and Europa
League rights from 2019-20 in a deal worth a
combined €350m per season – more than double
the current value of the rights.
This followed SFR Sport’s acquisition of English
Premier League rights in November 2015, also for
about double the previous value. Until the current
2016-19 Premier League cycle, the rights had been
a mainstay of Canal Plus’s offering.
Also in May, Canal Plus held on to Formula One
rights, agreeing to pay an uplift of 50 per cent on the
$40m per year it paid from 2013 to 2017. The new
deal will run from 2018 to 2020, but Canal Plus’s
2017 market value $2,234m
2017 market value per capita $34.39
Share of global market 4.8%
2016-17 growth 6.4%
2013-21 CAGR 5.7%
Most valuable property Ligue 1 ($1,003m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
44.9%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 34
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
rights will not be fully exclusive. TF1 has agreed a
deal with Formula One Management to show four
grands prix live each year over the same period. It
was the first time FOM had carved out a separate
package of free-to-air rights in the country.
BeIN Sports holds most other football rights,
including the Fifa World Cup, Germany’s Bundesliga,
Italy’s Serie A, and Spain’s LaLiga. It also holds
rights to Champions Cup and Challenge Cup rugby
union, the French handball league, ATP Tour and
Wimbledon tennis.
On free-to-air, France Télévisions traditionally
shows marquee events such as the Olympic Games,
rugby union’s Six Nations, the Tour de France and
the French Open. The broadcaster has retained its
major properties despite cuts to its sports-rights
budget.
TF1 is France Télévisions’ main competitor for
free-to-air rights. Its acquisition strategy is focused
on acquiring rights to major events, rather than
season-long properties. It shows French national
team football matches, it holds some men’s Fifa
World Cup rights, and will have exclusive coverage
of the women’s Fifa World Cup in 2019. It showed
22 matches from Euro 2016, held in France, and
showed the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 35
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Germany sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,409
1,5911,626 1,640
1,883
2,154 2,192 2,195
2,453
5. Germany
Despite having Europe’s biggest economy,
Germany’s sports-rights market for years lagged far
behind the UK, Italy and France due to a relatively
weak pay-television industry. This changed
substantially in the past year.
Pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland has for
years dominated the market. But following the launch
of OTT service DAZN by digital media company
Perform in August last year, the market has become
significantly more active as Sky faces competition.
As in other major European markets, football
dominates in Germany. The German league, the
Bundesliga, commands domestic rights fees of
€1.16bn per season from multiple deals (covering
the first and second divisions). Sky holds exclusive
live rights to most matches, and sports broadcaster
Eurosport shows 45 live matches per season.
The Champions League comes in some way
behind the Bundesliga in second. Rights in the
current cycle, from 2015-16 to 2017-18, are worth
about €128m per season. Sky holds rights to all
matches, while public-service broadcaster ZDF
shows marquee matches. From 2018-19 onward,
the competition will move fully to pay-television
following an exclusive deal with Sky, which
subsequently sublicensed matches to DAZN. This
helped Uefa to an increase of about 48 per cent.
DAZN has quickly built a decent sports-rights
portfolio. It holds rights to: England’s Premier
League, France’s Ligue 1, Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s
LaLiga, and the four major US sports leagues (MLB,
NBA, NFL and NHL). It also operates in Austria and
Switzerland.
Unsurprisingly for the current football world
champions, rights for the Fifa World Cup and Uefa
European Championship are also highly valuable,
as is the domestic club cup.
Outside football, Formula One is the biggest
property, with $70m revenue in 2016 and 2017 from
deals with Sky and commercial broadcaster RTL.
Although much less valuable than the top sports,
several Olympic sports generate their biggest rights
fees worldwide in Germany, often via deals with
the European Broadcasting Union, the consortium
2017 market value $1,883m
2017 market value per capita $22.96
Share of global market 4.0%
2016-17 growth 14.9%
2013-21 CAGR 7.2%
Most valuable property Bundesliga 1 ($855m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
45.4%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 36
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
of public-service broadcasters. As the strongest
members of the consortium financially, ARD and ZDF
are frequently the biggest guarantors of EBU deals.
Handball and winter sports properties –
particularly Alpine and Nordic skiing, ski jumping
and biathlon – can earn fees in the millions of euros
per year, especially when German athletes are
doing well. Germany is thought to account for about
30 per cent of the global value of Alpine and Nordic
World Ski Championships media rights.
ARD and ZDF dominate free-to-air sports
broadcasting in Germany, helped by licence fee
revenues of around €8bn per year. Commercial
broadcasters RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 have
traditionally provided competition for ARD and ZDF.
RTL remains interested in sport – its rights
include German national football team matches
and Formula One, which it has broadcast
since 1991. Sat.1 has focused increasingly on
entertainment programming in recent years but has
some sports rights, including the NFL.
Germany has several other lower-tier sports
broadcasters, including basic-tier and pay-television
broadcasters such as Sport1 and Sportdigital.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 37
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Spain sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
2,600
2,400
2,200
2,000
1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
1,270 1,290 1,289
1,521
1,735 1,812
2,190
2,493 2,548
6. Spain
Spain’s domestic football league, LaLiga, is the most
valuable property in the market, followed by the
Uefa Champions League. LaLiga is worth just over
€1bn per season.
In 2015, LaLiga began selling its media rights
on a collective basis – previously, they were sold
individually by clubs. Telco Telefónica paid €625m
for centralised rights in the 2015-16 season,
before the increase to over €1bn per season for
the 2016-17 to 2018-19 cycle when pay-television
broadcaster beIN Sports supplanted Telefónica as
the league’s main broadcast partner.
In July, beIN Sports, together with its agency
partner Mediapro, acquired exclusive Champions
League and Europa League rights in the next cycle,
from 2018-19 to 2020-21, for about €350m per
season. This represented an increase of about 77
per cent on the value of the rights in the current
cycle. Mediapro/beIN faced strong competition
from Telefónica.
Outside football, the most valuable sports are
motorsport and tennis. Spain is one of Formula
One’s most valuable markets, while MotoGP is also
strong in the country. Tennis rights values in Spain
have been lifted by the success of local star Rafael
Nadal.
The Spanish sports-rights market has undergone
major changes in recent years. The economic
downturn had a profound impact on the industry,
but after contracting in 2012 and 2013, the sports-
rights market underwent a recovery. This was due
to a change in strategy at Telefónica, the strategic
partnership between Mediapro and beIN Sports,
and the emergence of telcos Orange and Vodafone
as rights buyers.
In 2014, Telefónica acquired pay-television
platform Canal Plus, buying the stake owned by
Italian media group Mediaset and publisher Prisa.
In approving the merger, Spain’s competition
regulator required Telefónica to share 50 per cent
of its premium content, including movies and sport,
with its rivals.
In January 2016, Telefónica agreed a €2.4bn
deal to carry the beIN Sports LaLiga channels on
2017 market value $1,735m
2017 market value per capita $37.38
Share of global market 3.7%
2016-17 growth 14.1%
2013-21 CAGR 9.1%
Most valuable property LaLiga ($1,071m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
61.7%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 38
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
an exclusive basis for three seasons, from 2016-17
to 2018-19. BeIN launched in Spain in August 2015.
However, the exclusivity was lost after complaints
by Orange and Vodafone to the CNMC. The two
telcos have since agreed carriage deals for beIN
Sports LaLiga.
Commercial broadcaster Mediaset’s main
content is Fiba basketball. Commercial rival
Atresmedia’s only major sports property is the
Champions League, which it will lose when it moves
exclusively to pay-television from 2018-19.
Budget cuts have reduced TVE’s investment
in sports rights but the public-service broadcaster
is still able to acquire a substantial amount of
sports content, including major events, through
its membership of the European Broadcasting
Union, the consortium of Europe’s public-service
broadcasters. Its biggest deal is for Spain national
team football matches in Uefa events. It also shows
the Vuelta a España cycle race.
The Spanish branch of sports broadcaster
Eurosport, meanwhile, holds rights to the Australian,
French, and US Open tennis grand slams, and is
currently seeking to sublicense free-to-air rights to
the 2018 and 2020 Olympic Games.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 39
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Brazil sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
992
1,017 1,099
1,224 1,227 1,325
1,184 1,193
1,200
7. Brazil
Brazil is by far the most valuable market in Latin
America. Rights are often sold across the rest of the
region in single, pan-regional deals.
Rights fees in Brazil have increased in recent
years despite economic difficulties, although
the prolonged nature of those difficulties could
eventually hit home. The market will dip in value
in 2019 because of the weakening of the Brazilian
currency and the effect of that on the dollar
value of the most valuable property, the domestic
football league, compared to the last time it was
sold (we convert deals in local currencies into
dollars at the date the deal is announced).
The domestic football league, the Campeonato
Brasileiro Série A, is worth about $536m in 2017,
in individually-agreed deals by its clubs. There are
also several high-value regional competitions, such
as the Campeonato Paulista.
The Olympics is highly valuable, and its value
was enhanced by Rio de Janeiro hosting the 2016
Summer Games. In January 2016, TV Globo acquired
rights to the next eight Olympic games, covering the
2018 winter games onwards. The deal, which covers
all platforms, is worth about $600m, or $150m plus
airtime for each two-Games cycle.
There are four major competing sports
broadcasters: free-to-air Globo and its pay-
television arm Globosat, free-to-air and pay-
television Esporte Interativo, and purely pay-
television ESPN and Fox Sports. They sometimes
form partnerships in rights auctions, which stop
rights fees going through the roof, although
competition in the market is generally strong.
Globo, the biggest media group in Brazil, is
dominant. However its grip on domestic football
rights has been weakened by Esporte, which has
acquired the rights of some smaller Série A clubs,
plus popular Sao Paulo club Palmeiras, for the 2019
to 2024 cycle. Globo holds both free-to-air and pay-
television rights to all Série A clubs until the end of
the 2018 season.
International football rights, for properties
such as the Uefa Champions League and European
domestic leagues, are another major battleground
for Globo, Esporte, ESPN and Fox.
2017 market value $1,227m
2017 market value per capita $5.87
Share of global market 2.6%
2016-17 growth 0.3%
2013-21 CAGR 2.4%
Most valuable property Série A ($536m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
43.7%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 40
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Australia sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
915 9371,011 1,043 1,112
1,212 1,233 1,253 1,271
8. Australia
All figures in US dollars unless stated otherwise.
Australia has several highly-popular sports,
unlike many markets around the world which are
dominated by one or two. Australian rules football,
cricket and rugby league are the most valuable in
media rights terms, with football, the Olympics and
rugby union making up a second tier.
Pay-television broadcasters are restricted by
Australia’s stringent anti-siphoning list, which
prevents certain sporting events from being taken
completely off free-to-air television. This list
includes: both the summer and winter Olympic
Games, all international cricket matches played by
the Australian national team in Australia, all Ashes
series, the Australian Open tennis grand slam, and
the Formula One Australian Grand Prix, among
other properties.
The government is considering several
alterations to the list, including the removal of:
Fifa World Cup matches not involving Australia,
rugby league international test matches involving
Australia played in the UK, international rugby
union test matches involving Australia that are
played in South Africa or Europe, and the latter
stages of tennis grand slams Wimbledon and the US
Open.
Australia’s two most valuable properties – the
National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian
Football League (AFL) – saw major rights fee
increases under new deals announced in 2015.
The NRL’s pay-television, digital and free-to-air
deals for the 2018 to 2022 cycle will deliver $309m
per year.
In August 2015, the AFL agreed a six-year
extension, from 2017 to 2022, with incumbent
commercial broadcaster Seven, as well as Foxtel (for
its Fox Sports channels) and telco Telstra. The deals
are worth a record $1.84bn, or $306m per year. It
was a per-year increase of 67 per cent on the AFL’s
previous contracts running from 2012 to 2016.
Cricket Australia rights are the third-most
valuable property, earning $112m per year in deals
from 2013-14 to 2017-18 with Nine and commercial
2017 market value $1,112m
2017 market value per capita $45.51
Share of global market 2.4%
2016-17 growth 6.6%
2013-21 CAGR 4.2%
Most valuable property AFL ($306m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
27.5%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 41
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
broadcaster Ten. The rights cover national team
and domestic Twenty20 cricket. This was a fee
increase of over 100 per cent compared to the last
cycle.
Fox is the leading sports broadcaster.
Commercial broadcasters Seven, Nine and Ten
have traditionally been its key competitors for
sports rights. However in recent years, several new
pay-television operators have emerged to also
challenge Fox.
The telco Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore’s
Singtel, in November 2015 acquired the rights to
the English Premier League for 2016-17 to 2018-19,
paying a 213-per-cent increase on what Foxtel paid
in the 2013-14 to 2015-16 cycle. Foxtel had been the
Premier League’s sole broadcaster since 1997 and
the rights value had increased just 3 per cent in the
previous cycle as it faced minimal competition.
International sports broadcaster BeIN Media
Group has three channels in the market, which
Foxtel carries on its platform. ESPN also operates
in Australia and holds rights to the National
Basketball Association and US Open tennis.
Commercial broadcaster Ten looks to have been
weakened after entering voluntary administration
in June. However, it is set to be acquired by US
media company CBS, its largest creditor, for a
reported A$205m.
Public-service broadcasters ABC and SBS play
a relatively small role in sports broadcasting,
although SBS has several strong second-tier
properties, including the Fifa World Cup.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 42
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Canada sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
1,000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
515
737
924 932 940 943 950 956 961
9. Canada
Ice hockey’s NHL dominates the market in Canada.
The current central league deal is worth $417m per
year, and regional deals by the seven Canadian NHL
teams are worth a further $190m. Combined, the
NHL accounts for 65 per cent of the total value of
the market.
The centrally-sold NHL rights are held by
telco Rogers Communications in a 12-season
deal from 2014-15 to 2025-26. Regional rights to
each Canadian team’s games are held by regional
subsidiaries of either Rogers or rival media group
Bell Media.
Outside ice hockey, the most valuable properties
include the National Football League at about
$40m per year in 2017, the Canadian Football
League (Canadian football is similar to American
football) at $36m per year in 2017; Major League
Baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays, whose
regional deal with Rogers is worth $40m per year;
and the Olympics with public-service broadcaster
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at $21m
per year.
Rights for the CFL will be held by Bell Media
until 2021 as a result of a May 2015 agreement
which extended an existing deal by three years. The
broadcaster has been a partner of the competition
since the 1980s.
Two pay-television networks dominate sports
broadcasting in Canada – TSN, owned by Bell
Media, and Rogers Sportsnet, owned by Rogers
Communications. Rogers’ NHL deal tilted the
balance of power in its favour – TSN was the former
rights-holder.
As Canada has both English- and French-
speaking regions, most rights-holders strike
separate deals for English- and French-language
rights. Audiences for most sports are split 75:25
between English speakers and French speakers.
The two main French-language sports
broadcasters have partnerships with Rogers and
TSN – RDS is owned by Bell, so teams with TSN, and
TVA has an agreement with Rogers.
Public-service broadcaster CBC was formerly a
major sports broadcaster, but announced in April
2017 market value $940m
2017 market value per capita $25.66
Share of global market 2.0%
2016-17 growth 0.8%
2013-21 CAGR 8.1%
Most valuable property NHL ($607m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
64.6%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 43
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
2014 that it would no longer bid for rights to sports
events that do not have national significance, due
to budget cuts.
CBC was able to renew its rights for the Olympic
Games in November 2014, to cover the 2018 and
2020 Olympics, for an increase thought to be
less than 5 per cent. The seller, the International
Olympic Committee, was effectively confronted
with a buying cartel after CBC pre-agreed
sublicensing deals with both Rogers and Bell,
leaving no competition in the market. CBC also had
rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics.
The public-service broadcaster suffered a heavy
blow in the previous cycle when Rogers and Bell
jointly bought the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games,
along with London 2012.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 44
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
Indian subcontinent sports media rights market value 2013-21 ($m)
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: TV Sports Markets
675689 712 774 782
1,226 1,247 1,2631,264
10. Indian subcontinent
Sports media rights are usually sold on a pan-Indian
subcontinent basis, taking in Pakistan, Bangladesh
and several smaller countries as well as India. India-
based pay-television broadcasters such as Star and
Sony Pictures Networks India tend to acquire the
most valuable rights.
The major players in the sports rights market are
all pay-television broadcasters: Star, Sony, Neo and
DSport. Star, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s
21st Century Fox, and Sony are the strongest of the
four.
Ten Sports was another pay-television
competitor, until Sony acquired its channels from
Zee Entertainment Enterprises in a deal worth
$385m that completed in September 2017. Ten’s
channels have been rebranded as Sony Ten.
Discovery Communications-owned DSport is the
newest player, having launched in February 2017.
So far it has focused on smaller properties – its most
significant acquisitions have been golf majors the
US Open, the Open Championship and the US PGA
Championship.
Rights fees have generally been growing in
India, although not as spectacularly as in some
other developing markets. Pay-television, the main
driver of rights-fee increases in many markets, is
held back by weak infrastructure. Broadcasters rely
on subscriber fees from regional cable-television
platforms, and under-reporting of subscriber
numbers and piracy are rampant.
Rights fees are also affected by listed-events
legislation which dictates that rights for sports
events of national importance must be shared with
Doordarshan, the public-service broadcaster.
Cricket utterly dominates the market and
provides the top three properties: the Indian
Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 competition;
domestic matches of the Indian national team;
and the rights of the International Cricket Council,
which include the one-day and Twenty20 World
Cups.
Star has taken pole position in the market by
acquiring global IPL rights for five years, from
2017 market value $782m
2017 market value per capita $0.45
Share of global market 1.7%
2016-17 growth 1.1%
2013-21 CAGR 8.2%
Most valuable property ICC ($192m in 2017)
Most valuable property’s share of market
24.5%
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 45
THE TOP 10 MARKETS
2018 to 2022, in a deal worth a total of $2.55bn, an
average of $510m per year. This is an increase of
456 per cent on the last IPL global rights deal, when
the World Sport Group agency bought the rights for
$91.8m per year in 2008, though this deal was later
terminated. Sony then paid $77.5m per year for the
rights in the Indian subcontinent only from 2008 to
2017.
Star also holds global rights to International
Cricket Council events, paying $2.1bn over the eight
years from 2015-16 to 2022-23, and has the rights
to Board of Control for Cricket in India events,
including the Indian national team’s home matches,
in a seven-year deal from 2012 to 2018.
One of the more interesting aspects of the
recent IPL auction was that Facebook bid around
$600m for (although did not win) digital rights in
the Indian subcontinent, the company’s biggest
reported move to date for sports rights.
Football’s English Premier League is the most
valuable non-cricket property. Star is paying $100m
for the rights between 2016-17 and 2018-19, a
33-per-cent decrease on the previous fee. The
decrease reflected weaker competition than at
the previous auction, and a relatively undeveloped
audience for the property in India.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 46
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2018
What to look out for in 2018
Seven big sports media rights stories to look out for
next year.
Internet giants ramp up activityThe industry has been awaiting the entrance of
Silicon Valley’s giants for years, and it seems to be
finally happening, albeit slowly.
NFL Thursday Night Football digital rights in the
US increased in value five-fold as Amazon outbid
incumbent Twitter for the 2017 season. Amazon
acquired exclusive ATP tennis rights in the UK, and
will take the package over from dominant local
sports broadcaster Sky. Facebook made a $600m
bid for five years of domestic digital rights for
Indian Premier League cricket. There have been
rumours of other, bigger plays, but as yet no ‘big
bang’ deal to really usher in the era of the tech
giants.
The money spent so far is small fry, and the
companies appear to be testing the water. It is not
yet clear what the winning sports video business
models for them will look like. What is clear is the
growth in their interest in this content, and in TV
content in general, and we can expect more deals
in 2018.
Impact of Qatar blockade on beIN SportsFall-out from the Saudi Arabia-led blockade of
Qatar continues to affect Qatari-owned beIN Sports,
the most important sports broadcaster in the
Middle East and a significant player in several other
markets, particularly France.
BeIN told TV Sports Markets earlier this year
that it was ‘business as usual’ under the blockade.
A big deal in August to renew Uefa Champions
League rights in the Middle East – which trebled the
property’s previous fee – suggests beIN is in a strong
position yet.
But the broadcaster is undoubtedly under
pressure. Its big fee for the Champions League
was at least partly driven by this. Its rivals wanted
Uefa to bring the property to the market early to
see if they could exploit weakness at beIN. There
were rumours prior to the auction that a Saudi-
backed broadcaster would make a competitive
bid, although this never emerged. Elsewhere,
beIN’s production crews and reporters have been
obstructed in their efforts to cover sports events
in the Middle East, and shunned by some athletes
and team managers. A pirate internet stream called
‘boutQ’ – an obvious play on ‘beIN’ – has made
beIN’s premium sports coverage available for free
in Saudi Arabia.
With Saudi Arabia putting Qatar under
extraordinary pressure – including demanding the
shutting down of the Al Jazeera news network –
rights-holders will be crossing their fingers that
beIN is able to weather the storm. Its pursuit of
sports broadcasting dominance in the region has
massively increased the value of media rights there
in the last decade.
Change at Formula One in the Liberty Media eraThe world’s biggest motorsports series is now
owned by one of the world’s biggest television
and media companies, which has promised to
modernise the property’s approach to media,
particularly digital media. In 2018, we will find out
more about what this actually translates into.
A direct-to-consumer OTT offering is on the
cards, but not straight away. Chase Carey, the
hugely experienced TV executive now leading
Formula One for Liberty Media, said in August they
were still figuring out the best configuration of
media coverage, and acknowledged the conflicting
demands of different models. “In terms of the
television arena that we deal with, I guess the way
to describe it is that there are three or even four
potential arenas that we are engaged with,” he
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 47
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2018
told the media earlier this year. “Traditional free,
pay, digital and then our own probably more direct
over-the-top product. To some degree what you
have is conflicting goals across them. Probably the
economic premium paid gets higher as you go up
the ladder, but the reach gets less.
“We’re trying to balance what is the right mix of
reach and direct economic value. Clearly there are
impacts on other partners we have – for sponsors
the fan engagement is obviously very important.
“For us, the goal is to maximise long-term
growth, not to find a short-term pop.”
Factoring all this in, he indicated that the
traditional approach of media rights deals with
major broadcasters would be central to the
property’s media strategy for some time to come:
“It’s more and more heading to various forms of
digital platforms – I don’t think it will happen as fast
as some people think. Some habits die hard, and
there is a value in volume and choice.
“On the programming side, there’s still value in
reach. It’s going there [digital], but it will take time.”
This acknowledgement of the importance of
reach will be welcomed by Formula One’s free-to-
air broadcasters. In recent years, the property had
been moving away from its reliance on free-to-air in
its biggest markets, and doing more exclusive pay-
television deals.
English Premier League to agree new domestic dealsIn the coming months, the English Premier League
will return to the UK market seeking new domestic
rights deals for the three seasons from 2019-20 to
2021-22. A tender is likely to be issued late this year
or early next.
The league earns a total of £5.136bn
(€6.805bn/$7.719bn) in the current three-season
cycle, from 2016-17 to 2018-19, or £1.712bn per
season, from deals with pay-television broadcasters
Sky and BT Sport. Sky is paying £1.392bn per
season and BT is paying £320m per season. This
represented an increase of 69 per cent on the value
of the previous deal.
In the current cycle, 168 of the 380 matches per
season are broadcast live by either Sky or BT. From
2018-19 onward, the league is likely to sell live rights
to at least 190 matches per season. The increased
content will almost certainly guarantee the league
more revenue, but it is still not expected to secure
such a big uplift in fees as last time, unless a major
new bidder emerges to challenge BT and Sky.
Both Sky’s and BT’s businesses are facing
headwinds, including declining profitability which
in Sky’s case is strongly linked to the high cost of
Premier League rights.
One potential source of new competition is
American internet firms such as Amazon, Facebook
and Twitter. Long-expected to enter the sports TV
industry, they appear to be ramping up their activity
in the sector, including in the UK where Amazon
made its first move this August by acquiring ATP
tennis from 2019 to 2023.
However, none of the tech giants have yet
acquired a really premium property like Premier
League domestic rights, in any market. Even for
companies as cash rich as they are, acquiring a
significant portion of exclusive live Premier League
domestic rights would involve considerable outlay
and risk.
The likelihood is that BT and Sky will be the only
two big bidders in the upcoming auction, which will
make it difficult for the league to secure a similar
percentage increase as last time.
Uefa to exceed club competition revenue targetUefa, football’s European governing body, is almost
certain to exceed its income target of €3.2bn
($3.43bn) per season for media and marketing
rights to the Champions League and Europa League
competitions in its next cycle, from 2018-19 to 2020-
21. This target is 28 per cent more than the €2.5bn
per season Uefa is earning from the same set of
rights in the 2015-16 to 2017-18 cycle.
The governing body has made an excellent start
to the new cycle, securing solid increases in each
of the big five European markets, earning more
than half of its target from these territories alone. It
secured increases of:
• About 103 per cent in France, as telco Altice
claimed rights to both competitions.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 48
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2018
• About 77 per cent in Spain, as pay-television
broadcaster beIN Sports and agency Mediapro
retained rights to both competitions.
• About 45 per cent in Germany, as the Champions
League moved exclusively to pay-television.
• Just over 27 per cent in the UK, as telco BT
retained its rights.
• About 15 per cent from a difficult Italian market.
Uefa has also secured large fees from a deal with
OTT service DAZN in Japan; a renewal with beIN
Sports in the Middle East and North Africa; a deal
in Scandinavia with multi-territory commercial and
pay-television broadcaster Modern Times Group;
and in the US from deals with Turner Broadcasting
and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision.
Israeli pay-television broadcaster the Sports
Channel has paid the biggest increase thus far in
the new cycle, paying 440 per cent more to retain
Champions League rights, albeit from a lower base
than the aforementioned territories.
Discovery’s Olympics rights sublicensing milestonesOne of the most ambitious rights acquisitions of
recent years – Discovery’s of rights in Europe for
the Olympics in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 – faces
major milestones in the next few months.
Discovery will broadcast the Olympics across
the continent on its Eurosport channels. But under
International Olympic Committee rules it also had
to sublicense a portion of the rights to free-to-air
broadcasters. Having outbid these broadcasters to
win the rights in the first place, Discovery faced a
challenging task of agreeing sublicenses that gave
both sides value, and would make its landmark
deal worth it.
At the time of writing, Discovery had struck deals
with 20 of the biggest free-to-air broadcasters in
Europe. But it was yet to agree deals for the 2018
Games – which start February 9th in Pyeongchang,
South Korea – in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and
Israel. It hoped to agree deals in these territories
before the end of the year.
Speaking to TV Sports Markets earlier this year,
Eurosport chief executive Peter Hutton said: “I think
it’s fair to say we are on target. There are some big
ones to go. We have to do Italy and Spain, and 2022
and 2024 in France. We are ahead of where we
hoped we would be at this stage.
“There are a lot of variables to work on and
there is a lot of work still to do, but in sublicensing
numbers and free-to-air projections we are ahead.”
UFC goes to market in USThe UFC has been one of the biggest growth stories
in world sport in recent years. A measure of just how
great its progress has been will be provided when it
goes to market next year with its rights in the US.
Current rights-holder Fox, whose deal runs out at
the end of next year, is reported to be paying about
$115m per year. The property’s owner, the sports
and entertainment giant WME-IMG, is reported to
be seeking four times that – up to $450m per year –
in the next period.
The UFC is expected to seek to continue running
pay-per-view events itself, outside the rights deal,
although any rights-holding broadcaster is likely to
want at least a say in the match-ups that take place
in those events.
The rights are hitting the market after an
exclusive negotiating window for Fox expired
without a deal being agreed.
TVSM GLOBAL REPORT 2017 49
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2018