Liga F closed bidding for its television on Monday without receiving a single offer that reached the price it was asking.
On Wednesday, its Control Body for the Management of Audiovisual Rights agreed to open a second round. Operators that have already submitted a bid need only send a new financial proposal. The deadline closes at midday on 19 August.
The four packages on offer — two for Spain and two for the European Union — remain unawarded.
Five million for the eight matches
Those figures had been confidential. The terms required them to be deposited with Spain’s National Sports Council, which had to keep them sealed until the bids were opened.
Liga F published them when it opened the second round. It is not a gesture: its own terms only allow a new round to be called once the reserve price has been disclosed.
The package covering all eight matches from each matchday on pay television was priced at €5 million per season. The four free-to-air matches, €2 million. The European Union package, €800,000. The fourth, reserved for specific countries within the European Union, carried no minimum price, and is back on the market all the same.
The three minimum prices add up to €7.8 million per season.
Last season, DAZN’s budgeted contribution to the competition was around €7.5 million.
Liga F is asking, then, for almost exactly what it already had: €7.8 million in minimum prices against DAZN’s €7.5 million. No bid reached the five million of the main package.
Three ways out, and a precedent
The terms set out what the competition can do when a package falls short of its price.
It can award it anyway to whoever made the highest bid. It can call a new round, once the reserve price has been disclosed. Or it can give up exclusivity and sell the content on equal terms to every interested operator.
For now it has chosen the second.
It has been down this road once before. On 2 September 2022, during its first broadcast tender, the then LPFF also opened a second round for the main package after no bid reached the minimum. It published that figure at the time: €6.5 million per season.
Three days later it awarded the rights. Its own announcement acknowledged that no bid in the domestic market had reached the reserve price and, even so, the main package went to DAZN, and the free-to-air match and the highlights to Mediaproducción. The package of ninety-second clips found no buyer and the competition went on to distribute it without exclusivity.
In other words: in 2022 Liga F ended up using the other two ways out.
Four years on, the floor for the pay-TV package has fallen from €6.5 million to €5 million, 23% lower. The product is not the same either. In 2022 only one of the eight matches could be shown simultaneously free-to-air. Now four can.
The calendar runs into the start of the season
Liga F will assess the bids on 19 August and make a provisional award that same day. The contract can be signed then or, according to its terms, up to five working days after the provisional award, or on a later date accepted by Liga F.
The first matchday is played on the weekend of 29 and 30 August.
If the ordinary deadline is used in full, the contract that decides where Liga F can be watched could be signed less than a week before the opening kick-off. And the calendar allows for a later date, with no limit set.
In the meantime, neither the clubs nor the supporters know which channel will show the competition.
What is not known
How many bids Liga F received, and from which operators. Whether DAZN bid again.
What it will decide if the price is not reached this time either: accept the best offer, call another round, or move to a non-exclusive sale.
Nor has it reported the outcome of the third procedure, covering countries outside the European Union, which does not appear among the packages back on the market.
Liga F put its television on the market on 28 July. Sixteen days later, the price it was asking is now public and still has no buyer.