Advanced Television

La Liga on Amazon Prime Video?

August 6, 2019

Amazon Prime video could present a viable home for La Liga football coverage in the UK and Ireland. Last week, La Liga announced it had withdrawn its tender for the UK broadcast rights after receiving no satisfactory bids for the rights.

Speaking to SportsPro, Thomas Thomson, an Enders Analysis broadcast research analyst, said that while La Liga will not want to “dilute the value of their product” by pursuing a streaming-only option with Amazon Prime, the online giant could provide the top flight Spanish league with a solution, having shown “they are open to experimenting with football”.

“With the costs of the Premier League and Champions League still weighing heavily on Sky and BT – even with the significant reduction for the incoming Premier League rights cycle – pay-TV players are looking to cut spend on secondary rights wherever possible,” Thomson said.

“Sky now knows exactly how much La Liga was worth to them and will have a clear idea of how many subscribers they lost due to not having La Liga, which doesn’t do very well in terms of audience. Only El Clasico will go north of 500,000 viewers, which is a comparable audience for a mid-table Premier League fixture. Given that the new La Liga season is only a couple of weeks away it could be the case that broadcasters are waiting for La Liga to reduce their rights demands before bidding, knowing that their leverage will increase as we near the 2019/20 season’s kick-off,” he added

Though La Liga has taken its tender off the table, Eleven Sports is still in discussions with the body around a new agreement, having previously had a 3 year rights deal terminated. The OTT broadcaster is reportedly discussing options including launching a channel on Sky that would show matches.

The new La Liga season kicks off on August 16th.

Categories: Articles, Content, OTT, Rights