MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s top soccer league and private equity firm CVC plan to launch their own streaming platform, Spanish online paper El Confidencial reported on Monday, a move that would challenge telecom firms which offer match streaming in their packages.
La Liga agreed last week to a deal in which CVC would invest 2.7 billion euros ($3.18 billion) for 10% revenue and a 10% stake in a newly formed company housing a range of the league’s commercial activities.
A proprietary streaming platform is one of the key plans under consideration to drive up earnings for the league, El Confidencial reported, citing unidentified sources.
Neither La Liga nor CVC returned a request for comment.
If it goes ahead, such a platform would come as a blow to current rightholder Telefonica who pays La Liga 1 billion euros per season for the right to stream football matches to customers who pay a premium for sports packages.
Telefonica’s contract expires in 2023. France’s Orange has a sublicensing agreement, under which it pays Telefonica for the rights to broadcast fixtures from the 2021/2022 season.
While customers of Telefonica’s Movistar subsidiary pay up to 130 euros a month for live football in a package that also includes telephone, cable TV and internet services, La Liga and CVC believe they can offer a simple package of just football streaming for around 13 euros, El Confidencial said, citing unidentified sources.
Telefonica and Orange declined to comment.
($1 = 0.8503 euros)
(Reporting by Nathan Allen and Inti Landauro; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
