The tension is always well present around the diffusion rights of Belgian football. The gap between Dazn’s proposals and telecommunications operators remains important, the impasse remains.
Officially, negotiations are continuing, but the gap between demand and supply is great. Dazn paid 79 million euros for live rights from the first division and now disseminates them via its application. Through an agreement with telecommunications companies, it could generate additional income, but according to Dazn, cable companies have not yet made “serious proposals”. The operators say they remain interested, but only at a price in accordance with the market.
For telecom operators, Belgian football is no longer the priority that it was in the past. While sports rights were a way to sell group offers, operators now want to at least reach financial balance. This is also explained by the billions of investments in optical fiber and the decrease in the number of subscribers on conventional television.
Other non -essential sports for telecom operators
An agreement is all the more difficult to find that Dazn only wants to offer Belgian football than in the wider package “Dazn Total”, also including foreign football and other sports. Cablodistribution companies believe that additional content brings little value to their audience, while considerably increasing the price, according to Time.
Meanwhile, telecom operators lose sports subscribers. About 400,000 to 450,000 Belgians pay for live sport, but despite these losses, telecom operators do not want to give in. They think that customers left will not come back so easily.
Dazn hopes that operators will be under pressure if more subscribers leave and targets a breakthrough with an agreement with a single party. The operators, on the other hand, wait for Hoping that Dazn does not attract as many new customers as expected. Each day without agreement, the value of an agreement decreases for both parties. The question remains to know who will keep its nerves the longest in this dead end around Belgian football.
