Telefonica to pay €1.3 billion for Spanish Football TV Rights

Telefonica SA has been awarded rights to broadcast matches of Spain’s top-flight football league for €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion).

The Spanish carrier will have rights to five games per match-day over three seasons starting in 2024-2025, the company said in a regulatory filing Friday, adding that the start of the first contract will be on Jan. 20, 2025. Telefonica will pay €250 million for the first season and €520 million for each of the subsequent seasons. The overall price will be the same as it had paid in a previous tender.

Football is a core part of Telefonica’s business strategy in Spain, where it’s used costly pay-TV packages to attract higher-spending users who are unlikely to switch carriers based on cost. But for years the company was obliged by regulators to resell broadcast rights to competitors at a price set by the watchdog.

This changed on May 1, when the regulations ended. In August it won exclusive Spanish broadcasting rights for the UEFA Champions League.

The company has struggled with declining profits and sales for years in Spain, one of the most competitive markets in Europe. This trend has been changing in recent years and early 2023, the company said it aimed to stabilize Spanish profit during the second half. BNN Bloomberg