The new agreement reached by UEFA for the broadcasting rights of its men’s tournaments, in 19 territories for the 2027-2031 cycle, yielded a total of US$910 million and represented an increase of 40% compared to the last sale, according to The Athletic.
Bloomberg projects the contracts are expected to boost UEFA’s revenue from rights and commercial deals to more than $5.9 billion.
A source interviewed by the report states that price inflation was driven by the presence of North American media giants, Disney e Paramount (which is awaiting regulatory approval to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery). The bidding process involved Europe and the Americas, excluding the United States.
Continues after advertising
Read more:
And the developments reflected a new configuration of the Brazilian scenario.
Here, TNT guaranteed the renewal of its package, surpassing proposals from Globo and CazéTV. The new thing will be the display of 57 selected games on YouTube (probably majority of the first phase). While ESPN/Disney+ will hold 100% of the broadcast rights to the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League across Latin America.
Continues after advertising
The current contract also outperforms UEFA’s recent performance in key European markets. In the last cycle, the entity had already recorded an increase of approximately 20% in the sale of rights in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and Spain.
Read more:
As explained by The Athletic, commercial and media rights for the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League are now managed by UC3, a joint venture between UEFA and European Football Clubs (EFC), the lobby group formerly known as the European Club Association, with Relevent Football Partners acting as UC3’s sales agent.
Continues after advertising
The result of these new agreements is that UC3 has already secured more than US$3.8 billion in annual revenue of media rights from 2027. Reporter Matt Slater remembers that there are still auctions for the Asia, Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa regions to be held.
In four years, it will be time to renew in the USA. And until then, UEFA will enter into a fierce fight to prove the value of its intellectual property precisely in the market that currently accounts for 56% of global sports IP revenues.
The “2026 Sports IP Revenue League” report, published by Two Circles last week, shows that this segment generated a record US$174 billion in 2025. And, for the first time, a country, the USA, surpasses the 50% share mark.
Continues after advertising
And the ranking makes North American hegemony explicit. The NFL ($14.9 billion) and NBA ($8.1 billion) lead the way globally, while 45 of the world’s top 100 sports properties are headquartered in the country.
This year, UEFA and its UC3 appear in fifth place, with US$5.3 billion in revenue and a CAGR of 10% in 10 years. In other words: the entity grows, but still competes for space outside the market that effectively defines global value.
The study reveals another logic of power triggered by those who dominate monetization engineering, and not necessarily determined by the concentration of the audience, as pointed out by analyst and ex-FIFA Luis Vicente.
Continues after advertising
As a comparison, the world market has shown a compound annual growth rate of 6% since 2015, almost double the pace of global GDP, and is projected to exceed US$260 billion by 2033.
Sources heard by The Athletic indicate that the UC3 has already reached 75% of its target for the cycle, making the US$5 billion mark fully achievable.
Currently, the three competitions generate around US$4.2 billion per year, with more than 90% of this amount distributed among the participating clubs.
The weight of the media
Of the US$174 billion generated by the global market, US$58 billion (or 33.3%) is attributed directly to media rights.
The Two Circles report points out that the fragmentation of distribution and the atomization of consumption have forced rights holders to adapt to a new monetization logic.
Data cited in the report helps to measure this change. Sport already represents 9% of all content consumed globally, compared to less than 6% in 2020.
In February, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) already pointed out that media rights will continue to be the main driver of growth, especially for properties that can combine scale, engagement and global relevance.
Between 2014 and 2024, the world’s ten largest sports properties more than doubled the value of their rights, from around US$15 billion to US$32 billion. The second group, the next 20, increased from US$5 billion to US$7 billion.
In practice, the main properties grew almost three times faster and are now collectively worth four times more.
In short, media value is being concentrated in an increasingly smaller number of assets. Analyst Simon Lane has already warned about this, indicating that the rest of the market is starting to operate under compression.
The bulletin Sports Pundit reinforces that rights contracts still largely follow a unilateral format: sport provides the content, while broadcasters deliver distribution.
These players control vast entertainment ecosystems, with their own intellectual property and direct access to audiences that sport, alone, would be difficult to reach. And in practice, this additional value rarely enters the equation.
In the end, the reading done by the Unofficial Partner about the previous edition of the report remains valid: sport continues to be a B2B business, and increasingly concentrated in the hands of those who dominate the value architecture.
