While the standoff between Dazn and telecom operators temporarily leaves Belgian football supporters on the sidelines, a French influencer shakes up the rules of the media game: Streamer Zack Nani has just obtained the rights of the Saudi football league which it will broadcast for free on its networks.
Since the start of the 2025-2026 season, the Jupiler Pro League matches have been looking at a digital platform that has confused Belgian supporters. The DAZN group and the main telecom operators are still engaged in a tenacious duel around broadcasting rights, without any agreement having yet been found after three days of the championship. Result: the offer of Belgian football remains today limited or even inaccessible for many football enthusiasts who do not want to multiply paid subscriptions.
This blockage is not a first in our audiovisual landscape, but it illustrates a heavy trend on the market: the fragmentation of sports rights, now exploded between traditional diffusers, digital platforms, but also new unexpected players in the media landscape.
Digital revolution
While Belgium gets bogged down in its contractual quarrels, a small revolution is played out on the other side of the French border. Streaming in vogue followed by more than 1.3 million fans on Twitch and YouTube, the influencer Zack Nani has just won the diffusion rights of the Saudi Pro League, the Saudi football championship. For the first time in the history of football “mediated”, it is therefore not a television group or an international platform that wins the bet, but a creator of individual content!
To read: Football TV rights: how negotiations between Dazn and operators has become a school case
This theater has something to make you smile and especially to think. In a few years, Zack Nani has established itself as one of the best known faces of football streaming in France and today it becomes an official player in the diffusion rights market, for a championship which is far from anecdotal. The Saudi Pro League has attracted stars in recent seasons like Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kanté or Neymar, a casting that weighs heavy in terms of notoriety and audience: the global rights of this league have indeed jumped more than 250% since 2022, carried by the massive arrival of these stars of the round ball.
Pretty tackle
Spectacular, Zack Nani’s kick in the Football anthill recalls that the monopoly of traditional channels on major sporting events is cracking. Where, in Belgium, it is still difficult to agree between telecom operators and platform holding rights, other markets therefore see emerge figures from the creative economy, capable of mobilizing a faithful audience and ensuring live, free broadcasting, without going through the remote control tool.
Zack Nani’s hearings should, according to some analysts, exceed 500,000 unique spectators per match on its channels (more than certain French wired channels during the Ligue 1 meetings) and generate therefore precious advertising revenue. Because the matches of the Saudi Pro League will not only be broadcast on the French streamer YouTube channel, but also on Twitch, the prized streaming platform for young audiences. Here, no “frozen ” TV screen ” or institutional dressing: place in the spontaneous and interactive tone, with commented meetings live by Zack Nani and his guests, punctuated by hot reactions, improvised debates and exchanges with real -time chat. A format that deliberately contrasts with the smooth and standardized distribution of the classic audiovisual landscape…
” Beyond six figures ”
Amount of the operation carried out by the French influencer? Mystery … but in an interview with the newspaper The teamZack Nani specifies, however: ” It is the biggest investment made with my company that produces all my emissions and my YouTube videos. A sum beyond the six figures for a season, with an optional second. ”
What if, instead of waiting for the endless end of the negotiations between the Dazn group and the telecom operators, it was enough to connect tomorrow to Twitch to see a good old Anderlecht-Standard? The Belgian market may well ask the question faster than he imagines …
