Spanish FA forced to reopen bidding for women’s football TV rights after no broadcaster meets asking price
No one bids for women’s football broadcasting rights
With no bidders willing to meet La Liga F’s minimum asking price of €5 million, a new one-week bidding period has been opened, this time with no minimum price.
La Liga F will have to hold a second round of bidding to sell its audiovisual rights. No one was willing to pay the minimum asking price set by the organization: €5 million for the eight matches per matchday, or €2 million for a single match broadcast free-to-air. There were also no offers for the international rights, which had been priced at €800,000.
Broadcasters will now have until August 19 to submit new offers, barely ten days before the competition is scheduled to begin on August 29. This time, there will be no minimum bid.
For the previous rights holder, DAZN, broadcasting women’s football turned out to be a financial disaster. It was paying €7 million per season before terminating the contract a year early. Now, despite the reduced asking price, no broadcaster is willing to take over for the current period. It looks bad.
This is a difficult and hard-to-understand situation for a competition that wants to present itself as professional. But there is an even more important question: how are the clubs supposed to prepare their budgets if they don't know how much television revenue they will receive?
Clubs have to plan salaries, transfers, coaching staff, travel, facilities and professional structures, all of which require financial certainty. Yet with barely two weeks to go before the season starts, they still don't know who will broadcast the competition or how much money they will receive from the audiovisual rights.
The clubs also bear some responsibility here, because they have repeatedly backed the management of the organization running the competition. If they support the management model, they must also accept their share of the responsibility when things don't work. This isn't simply a broadcasting problem; it's a problem of planning and management.
La Liga F had set reserve prices for its rights. The market has responded in the first round by saying it isn't willing to pay them. That doesn't mean women's football has no value. It means that the value La Liga F believes its product has does not currently match what broadcasters are willing to pay. And that's where a serious discussion should begin.
Especially considering that La Liga F's own organizational chart, published in its transparency section, currently lists the position responsible for competitions and audiovisual products as vacant. The question is inevitable: who is actually leading such a strategically important issue as the competition's audiovisual product?
It's not enough to simply put the rights on the market, set a price and wait for someone to accept it. You have to build an attractive product, analyze the market, understand the broadcasters and know what you can realistically demand and offer. If the first round failed, perhaps the question should be whether the €5 million and €2 million price points were realistic, whether the commercialization model is appropriate, or whether enough is being done to increase the competition's television value.
The second round will provide an answer. But it is coming late. Clubs need certainty to prepare their budgets, while fans need to know where they will be able to watch the competition. On August 19, we will find out whether anyone ultimately decides to bid for the rights.