MUMBAI: The agreement has not been signed, sealed and delivered as yet but SportzPower can confirm that Facebook is close to securing the media rights for LaLiga in this market for the next four-year cycle.
If the contract does get closed, as is expected, the social media behemoth will hold digital and broadcast rights to the top flight of Spanish club football for the Indian subcontinent – covering India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan.
The big question of course is around the platform Facebook would partner with for television broadcast. For it stands to reason that in bandwidth challenged territories like the Indian subcontinent, digital-only broadcast on Facebook Live alone would be a “deal breaker” for LaLiga, more so since it has identified India as among its key international growth markets.
While SportzPower was unable to get any official comments from Facebook, sources close to the developments have confirmed that the social media network would look to work with broadcasters if and when it finally closes the deal with LaLiga.
SportzPower also reached out to LaLiga India country manager José Cachaza but he too remained non-committal.
Be that as it may, from this perch it looks unlikely that the two big daddies of Indian sports broadcast – incumbent rights holder Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) or Star India would be interested in picking up just the “television piece of the LaLiga pie”.
That leaves the Discovery Communications branded sports channel DSport or Neo Sports Broadcast, the sports channel wing of the Harish Thawani promoted Nimbus Communications.
On the face of it (pun intended), one would expect that Facebook would see DSport as a better fit considering that Peter Hutton, FB’s director of global live sports partnerships and programming, last assignment was as head of Discovery Communications owned pan European sportscaster Eurosport.
As far as acquisition costs are concerned, SportzPower has not been made privy to the numbers being negotiated. Suffice to say though, that as SPN had acquired the LaLiga broadcast rights in a $32 million deal four years ago, there has likely been a significant mark-up. Which is what made Sony decide against renewing the rights that expired in May.
Related Report
FB scores EPL rights in SE Asia
