24 April 2025
Is there a better way to award sports media rights?
Awarding sports content rights requires a transparent and structured tender process with clear objectives. Otherwise, it can result in contentious legal battles between leagues and broadcasters – 2024 saw Warner Bros. Discovery sue the NBA and DAZN sue the German Football League over disputes regarding the award of sports media rights. Can sports leagues learn from other industries, such as spectrum awards in telecoms, to improve how they award content rights to avoid these situations?
Leagues must determine objectives before awarding media rights
The process of awarding sports media rights involves the governing bodies of sports leagues entering negotiations with broadcasters and streaming platforms. The leagues can adopt many different mechanisms for awarding the rights and choosing the right mechanism can be challenging. First the league must determine its main objectives when awarding the rights, which typically include the following:
The optimal award mechanism varies depending on objectives
The optimal method of awarding the rights may vary depending on the league’s objectives and the current situation. Below we suggest some of the optimal award mechanisms for typical objectives. However, the situation in each league is different so should be considered differently when designing the process.
Previous disputes highlight the importance of clarity
Previous disputes over sports broadcasting rights stress the importance of clear tender processes to prevent conflicts and ensure fairness.
In Germany, the Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL) faced legal challenges during the allocation of Bundesliga broadcasting rights for the 2025/26 to 2028/29 seasons. Initially, Sky Deutschland was awarded a significant package despite DAZN’s higher bid, due to concerns over DAZN’s bank guarantee. An arbitration tribunal later ruled this decision unlawful, mandating a re-tendering of the rights.[1]
In the United States, the NBA’s media rights negotiations led to a legal dispute between Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and the league. WBD, through its TNT channel, held matching rights for NBA broadcasts and matched Amazon’s USD1.8bn annual streaming offer. However, the NBA rejected WBD’s bid, citing differences in terms, as Amazon’s offer was exclusively for streaming. This prompted WBD to file a lawsuit against the NBA, alleging breach of contract. The dispute was eventually settled, with WBD retaining certain rights, including highlight packages and international broadcasting in select regions.[2]
Can the industry learn from these shortfalls?
To avoid these disputes, leagues could adopt practices from other sectors, such as telecoms, where auctions are used to assign spectrum. There are similarities between spectrum and broadcasting rights, such as:
- Limited and regulated resources – Both spectrum and sports broadcasting rights involve scarce resources that require regulation and structured allocation processes to ensure fair access
- Exclusive Usage Agreements – Both involve agreements that grant temporary, exclusive access to a valuable asset
- Public and commercial benefits – Both enable widespread access to essential services while also generating significant revenue for governments, leagues, and businesses.
When spectrum is awarded, regulators typically run a transparent process, including multiple public consultations on the process and rules of the award. This ensures transparency and clarity. Telecoms regulators are typically required to follow such processes due to being public bodies awarding a public good. In contrast, as private organisations, sports leagues are not subject to the same level of scrutiny and governance. However, despite that, adopting aspects of spectrum award processes may help reduce the chances of disputes later on when awarding content rights.
