February 2 – Amazon is set to become the world’s biggest streaming investor in sports rights in 2026 with new analysis from Ampere finding that streaming services will spend a combined $14.2 billion on sports rights this year, up 7% on 2025.
January 30 – Ligue 1+, the broadcast streaming channel owned by the league, is making its boldest and perhaps its riskiest move to date after securing French rights to the entire 2026 FIFA World Cup through a deal with FIFA.
January 30 – The BBC’s Match of the Day, the world’s longest-running football highlights show, is experiencing a shift in how audiences consume the show with traditional TV viewing down, but digital engagement up as fan demographics show a move toward on-demand and mobile platforms.
January 29 – The French Professional Football League (LFP), organiser of Ligue 1, has secured another courtroom victory over one of its broadcast partners with beIN Sports ordered to pay €14.13 million in withheld payments.
January 28 – Major League Soccer (MLS) has unveiled Walmart Saturday Showdown, a new weekly broadcast designed to create appointment viewing and sharpen the league’s national narrative around its most marketable matchups. Think Monday Night Football, which has been a stable of the American sports market for decades and is now a national institution.
January 28 – UEFA has formally launched its tender process in the Netherlands for the 2027-28 to 2030-31 broadcast cycle, placing the UEFA Champions League back on the market alongside the Super Cup and UEFA Youth League.
January 23 – Manchester United are exploring how to monetise their storied history, without handing control of the present to a documentary crew with too much access and not enough mercy.
January 19 – LaLiga is heading back to free-to-air television in Spain, a move that feels almost nostalgic in a market where top-level football has largely disappeared behind pay walls.
January 16 – FIFA has confirmed a broadcast plan for the final stage of the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup 2026, ensuring the first edition of the tournament will be widely available to fans through a mix of free streaming and established broadcast partners.
January 14 – Italy’s competition authority has reduced a fine handed to DAZN in a long-running Serie A antitrust case, cutting the penalty from €7.24 million to €3.67 million.
January 13 – Sky Deutschland has deepened its use of automated content production after renewing and expanding its partnership with WSC Sports, extending the deal by a further two years and widening its scope into Austria.
January 8 – FIFA has unveiled a suite of new technologies developed in partnership with Lenovo that are designed to touch officiating, performance analysis and broadcast presentation within football.
January 7 – UEFA has locked in its broadcast partners for Albania and Kosovo through to the end of the decade, handing ArtMotion the rights to its flagship club competitions for the next four seasons.
January 7 – Gary Neville’s ‘The Overlap’ – the YouTube-first football media business he co-founded – has sold a majority stake to Global, one of Europe’s largest commercial radio groups.
January 7 – Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger podcast production company is pushing deeper into rights-backed football content with the launch of a new Premier League series titled ‘Premier League Greats: The Moments That Made Them’.