On 28 July 2026, Liga F opened a tender to sell all its broadcast rights from the 2026/27 season. The decision had an unusual feature: it included a season whose rights it had already awarded to DAZN.
To understand how it came to this, one has to go back four years, to a contract questioned from the outset and a partner that came close to walking away.
The contract that started it all
On 5 September 2022, in its first season as a professional competition, Liga F centrally awarded its broadcast rights.
DAZN took the main package: the broadcast in Spain of all eight matches of each round —seven of them exclusively— and the international rights. It paid €35 million for five seasons, through to 2026/27. Mediapro secured, in a separate lot, the weekly free-to-air match on Gol and the highlights.
The agreement was born under suspicion. The National Commission on Markets and Competition reproached Liga F for having awarded the rights before the legal deadline had elapsed and required that the awarded rights be annulled. According to El Español, the regulator described the tender as “null and void” in that second demand.
Liga F did not annul the contracts, and the award remained in force.
A partner paying seven and taking in one
For DAZN, the figures never quite added up.
The platform paid around seven million euros per season but got far less in return. In 2024/25 it had barely 10,000 subscribers linked to Liga F and subscription revenue of about 1.4 million euros, according to figures published by ABC.
The discontent became visible during the summer of 2025. DAZN considered reducing its contribution and sharing the matches with other operators, including regional broadcasters. It also went as far as removing every trace of Liga F from its website and app despite the contract still being in force.
DAZN digs in, but does not leave
DAZN did not actually go.
It broadcast a fourth season, 2025/26, with a contribution budgeted at around 7.5 million euros: half a million more than the average of the 2022 contract.
On 19 November 2025, DAZN and Liga F also signed an agreement by which the platform gave up the exclusivity of up to four additional matches per round. The change made it possible to widen the free-to-air offer during the second half of the season, with RTVE and TV3 coming in.
What is not known is the next step: how Liga F was able to recover, a year ahead of schedule, a season that DAZN still held. The competition has not explained whether there was a clause, a termination agreement or any compensation.
Gasol, two contracts and a new tender
On 29 June 2026, the clubs’ assembly approved by a reinforced majority the arrival of Gasol16 Ventures and Fortified Partners, even though a quarter of the clubs chose not to sign up.
The investors committed 55 million euros over four seasons in exchange for a share of the competition’s commercial revenue: 49% of the revenue covered by the agreement until they recover their investment, and 35% thereafter. The commitment runs for twenty-five years.
The operation was aimed at reorganising the competition’s other major business: its commercial and sponsorship assets.
Since 2022, LaLiga had acted as Liga F’s exclusive commercial agent through a contract that guaranteed the competition minimum revenue of 42 million euros over five seasons. That deal was also due to run until 2026/27. Liga F has not publicly explained how its final year fits with the arrival of the new commercial partner.
The television rights were not part of that contract. LaLiga sold sponsorship, licensing and other assets; the broadcast rights were tendered directly by Liga F.
The two moves came one after the other, however. At the same assembly that approved the Gasol16 deal, the competition announced it would open a new procedure to sell its television. A month later it did so.
The tender offers pay-TV operators all eight matches of each round and allows four of them to be shown free-to-air as well. Contracts can run for three, four or five seasons, and each package includes one of the two matches between Barcelona and Real Madrid. The deadline for bids closed at 1pm on 10 August. It passed without a single proposal reaching the reserve price, and two days later the competition opened a second round.
Among the rights on offer, the 2026/27 season reappears —the one DAZN still had under contract.
In other words, it is Liga F that has opened the process that could replace DAZN, not DAZN that has unilaterally walked away from the competition. How the year left on the contract is being brought to a close remains unexplained.
The nuance almost nobody mentions
One repeated explanation hangs over this move: that DAZN grew tired because no one was watching Liga F.
The figures call for some nuance. Television audiences did not fall; they rose, from 6.7 million cumulative viewers in 2024/25 to 7.5 million in 2025/26. That is an increase of 11.2% following the addition of more free-to-air matches.
DAZN’s problem was not necessarily how many people watched a match, but how many paid to do so. The subscriptions tied to the competition never reached the level needed to justify its investment.
There were more viewers, but not enough subscribers to make the rights pay.
What is still unknown
With the tender still open, several questions remain publicly unanswered: whether DAZN will bid again or leave Liga F, whether it received any compensation for the early termination of the contract’s final year, and which operators will broadcast the competition from this very season.
It also remains to be clarified how the final year of the commercial contract with LaLiga was resolved.
Liga F has put back on the market two businesses committed until 2027. For now, it has only explained what it intends to do with them from then on, not how it has recovered the year that still remained.