Eleven Sports may be facing closure in UK after only four months

SDF

SDF

Well-Known Member
Eleven Sports, the self-styled “Netflix of Sports” controlled by the Leeds United owner, Andrea Radrizzani, could be facing closure in the UK & Ireland after failing to attract enough subscribers.

The service, which launched less than four months ago, has the UK rights to sports including Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s La Liga and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Eleven Sports, which was forced to stop its controversial practice of broadcasting European games on Saturday afternoons after pressure from football stakeholders, is aiming to renegotiate rights deals to avoid pulling the plug on its service.

The situation has been triggered by the UFC triggering an exit clause on its exclusive deal with Eleven Sports, which was due to begin in January, after Eleven Sports was unable to secure promised distribution via pay-TV platforms including Sky, Virgin Media and BT.

Eleven Sports is aiming to renegotiate its sports rights deals at a much cheaper rate to try to continue to operate a much smaller, commercially viable operation in the UK.

“Without carriage agreements with the existing platforms, alongside the challenges posed by rampant piracy, the current market dynamics in the UK & Ireland are very hostile for new entrants,” said a spokesman for Eleven Sports. “We are in discussion with our rights partners, La Liga and IMG, about how we can restructure our existing agreements in order to continue our current OTT [streaming] service.”

UFC, the increasingly popular mixed martial arts competition, is understood to be back in talks with the previous rights holder BT about a new broadcast deal.

Eleven Sports is preparing to hand back the TV rights to Serie A to IMG, which acts as agent, which would allow them to be resold. The streaming service secured the rights to Serie A in July in a three-year deal, ending BT’s six year association with Italy’s top league.

In May Eleven Sports struck a three-year deal with La Liga, ending Sky’s 20-year association with Spain’s top-flight football league. La Liga sells its rights directly to media partners.

Eleven Sports has attracted only about 50,000 subscriptions since its UK launch in August, according to the Telegraph which broke the news of the streaming service’s difficulties. Eleven Sports charges £5.99 a month.

The rival sports streaming service Dazn, which is owned by the Warner Music owner and Spotify investor Len Blavatnik, has said it will not launch in the UK because the market is too competitive. Dazn is live in seven countries and will be live in 20 markets by 2022.

Endeavour, the Hollywood talent agency which owns UFC and IMG, holds a minority stake in Eleven Sports UK & Ireland.

Eleven Sports, which also operates in markets including Poland and Portugal, is controlled via the holding company Aser which in turn is controlled by Radrizzani.

In April the Guardian revealed that the London offices of IMG and MP & Silva, the sports rights agency co-founded by Radrizzani, had been raided by officials from the European commission investigating potential sports rights cartels.

European investigators entered the offices of IMG and MP & Silva on 10 April as part of a series of raids timed simultaneously including at the 21st Century Fox subsidiary Fox Networks Group, which is based in west London, and Ziggo Sport, the Dutch subsidiary owned by Vodafone and Virgin Media parent Liberty Global.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...e-facing-closure-in-uk-after-only-four-months
 
Wouldn’t be a great loss.

I was never a religious watcher of La Liga or Serie A but used to enjoy taking in the odd game on BT or Sky, I certainly wasn’t up for paying even more money for what was supposedly really amateur coverage.

Hopefully one or both of the above can come back in.
 
Excellent, get the Spanish football back on telly. Sky or BT not fussed.
 
Was always going to fail without TV channels or a smart tv app.

Glad the UFC are looking to go back to BT. Hopefully Serie A and La Liga follow suit.
 
Doesn't surprise me this is happening but is cheaper to have it online than a proper TV channel. Rangers TV is that way
 
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It was "who the feck are they" when they screwed the world of us Serie A and La Liga fans by depriving us of pub viewing. If this means they're both returning to a pub near you, this is a result :D
 
Various leagues and sports divided up between Sky and BT is fair enough. Punters won't be subscribing for any more than one or two platforms.
 
f@cking garbage that if we want to watch all available televised games we need around 4 different subscriptions, ,its legalised ripping off,,all the televised games should be available to all the broadcasting platforms and give the paying customer the choice of who they go with,,
 
Not exactly a shock is it?
Was never going to work and hopefully it goes back to BT or Sky as soon as possible.
 
It was always going to happen.

The online/streaming service just wasn't going to work here especially given what UK sports fans already pay .

The shit was already hitting the fan when they started showing games free on stv player, trying to attract customers.

Add the fact that internet streams are easy for IPTV hosters to pirate, they were always fucked .
 
I've watched a few games on STV player Eleven Sports had Kevin Keating's & Terry Gibson on the Mic both former Sky Commentators & clearly the best amongst that bunch of hysterical monkeys that are still @ Sky Sports commentating on The BPL.

La Liga commentators like Keating's & Gibson made watching & listening to the matches informative & entertaining a damn site more professional than these other Fucking Idiots still at Sky who have an orgasm every time their favourites score a goal by going off on one by screeching the scorers name through the mic for anything up to hauf a minute.
 
Superrangers said:
Haven’t seen it but I am not a fan when there’s no proper build-up, analysis, punditry, etc. I hate watching games where at half-time the commentator just summarises the action.
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Cost-effective

BT Sport have shown that when they done away with the European Show on a Sunday night
 
rangeral said:
Cost-effective

BT Sport have shown that when they done away with the European Show on a Sunday night
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It’s only cost effective if people continue to subscribe. If people don’t tune in because they feel the coverage is shit, it’s false economy.
 
Superrangers said:
It’s only cost effective if people continue to subscribe. If people don’t tune in because they feel the coverage is shit, it’s false economy.
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yeah that is true about subscriptions etc but in truth is costly to have a presenter, pundits etc then you have behind the scenes production staff etc as well for every game

it is cost-effective to have 1 person or maybe 2 commenting from a sound booth off a TV screen which happens a lot and that is it
 
Sky should jump all over La Liga and Serie A...their football coverage is horrendous now and BT is pissing all over them.
 
I've been paying for it monthly but will be glad if it goes to the wall and we get it back on the television channels.

Bit of a shitter for folk that paid for the year up front.
 
Over the summer we had folk trying to defend the streaming model, when most of us were saying they needed a tv channel.

Glad to see their experiment has failed, would be a great Christmas present to have Serie A and La Liga back on Saturday and Sunday nights. It’s been badly missed.
 
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