European football leagues have been warned off selling their media rights to sports streaming platform Dazn by credit rating agency Morningstar DBRS.
It comes amid a legal row between Dazn and French football chiefs over the rights to Ligue 1 due to lower than expected take-up of its subscriptions from consumers.
Morningstar DBRS said partnering with British-based Dazn could make it harder for leagues to grow the value of their rights and would ultimately harm their teams’ competitiveness.
“We see recent developments linked to this broadcaster as a warning signal for the European leagues,” said Manuel Gutierrez, vice president, corporate ratings.
“Dazn’s increasing presence in European TV rights has created significant market concentration and barriers to entry that could lead to renewal risk for leagues that have already sold TV rights to the broadcaster.
“Several traditional broadcasters, including Sky and Movistar, are reducing their exposure to football TV rights, leaving Dazn to grab a larger slice of the pie; the more it grabs, the higher the renewal risk for leagues as Dazn could have the power to lower its offers in next tenders, especially considering its cumulative net losses of $8.3bn over the last six years.”
Dazn owns rights to LaLiga in Spain, Germany’s Bundesliga and Serie A in Italy, and acquired the global rights to this summer’s first expanded Club World Cup from Fifa for a reported $1bn.
It has close ties with boxing, through deals with promoters Matchroom and Queensberry, and Saudi Arabia, which this month took a minority stake in Dazn through Surj Sports Investment.
Since its launch in 2016 it has required billions of pounds of injections from majority owner Sir Len Blavatnik, although its losses have narrowed in the most recent years.
Dazn French football row heads to mediation
Dazn declined to comment on the Morningstar DBRS analysis but sources close to the platform said it had good relationships with its partners and there was no renewal risk for leagues.
They added that the Ligue 1 row, which saw Dazn withhold payments as it sought to renegotiate the deal, was down to the league’s inadequate anti-piracy measures eroding the rights value.
“Put simply, not protecting domestic exclusivity is tantamount to selling a saucepan and delivering a colander,” they said.
The Ligue 1 rights are now the subject of mediation between league chiefs the LFP and Dazn at a Paris tribunal “in order to find a solution to the issues shared by both parties”, they said in a joint statement on Thursday.
It added: “In this context, an initial agreement was reached under which, Dazn having paid the January 2025 deadline, the LFP withdrew from the summary procedure that it had initiated.
“Discussions are continuing to try to find an agreement on all the difficulties encountered between the LFP and Dazn.”