The sports industry is undergoing rapid transformation, with tech companies competing with legacy broadcasters for lucrative media rights, while institutional investors are acquiring stakes in leagues and teams. Alongside this increased commercialisation of sports there has been a notable increase in high-value and complex disputes. Recent decisions of arbitral tribunals and courts have highlighted the growing role of competition law in sports, while issues around financial fair play, breakaway competitions and effective sports governance also continue to attract significant attention.
By Rhodri Thomas, Amani Khalifa, José Luis Prieto and Felix Schaaf
Our sports disputes practice has the expertise to help businesses navigate this changing landscape. Please reach out to us if you would like to discuss.
In July 2024, the National Basketball Association (NBA), the most popular basketball league in the world, announced new media rights deals with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon. The agreements are reportedly worth around US$76bn over 11 years and highlight two wider trends which have transformed the sports industry in recent years:
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first, the significant increase in the value of media rights of premier sports competitions, with the NBA reportedly securing an increase of around US$4bn a year compared to its existing deals with Disney and Warner Bros Discovery; and
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second, the evolving competitive landscape, as new, on-demand streaming platforms challenge the position of legacy broadcasters. For instance, the NBA deals saw the arrival of Amazon’s Prime Video, and the departure of Warner Bros Discovery, home of TNT Sports.
The transformation of the media rights landscape across the industry, alongside specific features of sports, such as fan loyalty, has caught the attention of new and sophisticated investors. Private equity and sovereign wealth funds in particular have made significant investments in sports over the last few years. As a sign of the times, the National Football League (NFL) was the last major US league to change its ownership rules in August 2024 to allow a group of pre-approved private equity funds to acquire minority stakes in NFL teams. Some of the whitelisted funds—such as Arctos, Ares, CVC and Sixth Street—already hold significant interests across a number of other sports, including European football, basketball, baseball, tennis, rugby, cricket and ice hockey. Amid this flurry of activity Goldman Sachs has posed the question: “is sports the next trillion-dollar market?”
Although sports leagues, teams and their fans have generally welcomed the arrival of institutional investors—recall the celebrations on the streets of Newcastle following the announcement that a consortium backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund had acquired Newcastle Football Club—there remain clear differences in approach across sports and regions. For example:
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The English Premier League (EPL), the most popular football league in the world, does not prohibit or limit investment by institutional investors, provided they comply with certain fitness and suitability criteria.
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The NFL, on the other hand, allows for limited private equity investment, as noted above, but currently prohibits direct investment by sovereign wealth and pension funds.
The top divisions of German football, the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, stand out as exceptions to the trend. Following fan protests, the Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL), which organises the competitions, announced in February 2024 that it had shelved plans to sell a stake in its media rights to a private equity fund for around €1bn. Whether the DFL can afford to buck the trend remains to be seen; notably, the French and Spanish football leagues have recently entered into similar investment deals.
