The Spanish division of Vodafone has confirmed it will not offer the full package of football content held by rival telco Telefónica stating the continuous rise in the cost of these rights makes it impossible to offer them at a reasonable price to its customers.
Telefónica last month sealed an agreement with the Mediapro agency to acquire rights for the Uefa Champions League and Europa League club tournaments. The agreement will run for three seasons, from 2018-19 to 2020-21, and is worth €360m ($419m).
The new rights in the residential Spanish market come on top of Telefónica building on its existing LaLiga portfolio by acquiring the pay-television rights to nine top-tier Spanish matches per round over the three seasons, from 2019-20 to 2021-22.
Vodafone España paid €250m for LaLiga and Champions League rights for its subscribers last season and has previously warned that fee escalations would make it difficult for it to justify extending its deal.
In a statement, Vodafone said in “exceptional conditions” it will offer for the 2018-19 season a football package consisting of eight matches per round from LaLiga, along with all matches from the Segunda Division and Copa del Rey.
This package will be free for customers who are already subscribers to the current football offering and will have a cost of €5 per month for new customers interested in this content. Citing an industry report, Vodafone said that 53 per cent of Spanish viewers cited film as the most important content when choosing a pay-television provider, followed by international television series, while football was only key to 21 per cent of viewers.
Vodafone added: “With respect to the channels ‘El Partidazo’ and ‘Champions League’, the continuous rise in the cost of the rights and the wholesale resale model makes it impossible to make an offer of this content at a reasonable price to the clients.
“To do so, Vodafone would have to compensate this effort with other things different from football. Vodafone has decided not to accept the proposal submitted by Telefónica based on guaranteed minimums, but has expressed its willingness to negotiate an agreement based on variable costs per subscriber.”
Orange is the only telco which is said to have so far committed to sublicensing Telefónica’s football packages.