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What's the story?
Facebook has secured a ground-breaking deal with the Spanish top flight, La Liga, to stream all 380 matches over the coming season for free on their social network according to Reuters. The 3-year deal encompasses countries across the Indian sub-continent including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka.
In case you didn't know...
Facebook has won the rights to show live La Liga games from Sony Pictures Network who had previously bought the rights in the region for €28 million in 2014. However, their deal expired over the summer and Facebook has swooped in with an as yet undisclosed winning bid to secure the rights for the next three seasons.
Facebook has started venturing into live sports streaming over the past 12 months. The social network giant has been broadcasting live MLB games since 2017 and also bought the rights to show one La Liga and one Serie A game per week across numerous countries. They also teamed up with Eleven Sports to show the first two rounds of the US PGA golf tournament last weekend.
The heart of the matter
The battle for broadcasting rights of elite European leagues has moved beyond traditional television subscription services. From 2019, Amazon will show 20 live Premier League games per season on its platform. This, in combination with the huge move to show La Liga by Facebook, provides a hint as to how we might watch live sports in the future.
Alfredo Bermejo, the head of digital strategy for La Liga, was extremely excited about the announcement and told Reuters:
"We are really happy to be on a free to air service in such an important territory as the Indian sub-continent. One of our goals for the last two years has been to offer content to the widest audience possible, so partnering with free platforms like Facebook, which has 270 million users in India, is key to us."
This excitement was echoed by Peter Hutton, the Director of Global Live Sports for Facebook. However, he also stressed the necessity of not rushing into things. He told Reuters:
"We're looking at a few other deals that are quite close to completion but this is not about going out and buying a huge amount of content worldwide. We're looking at specific rights in specific markets and to try to learn from data from those experiences and work out what the next step is. If you rush into too many deals at once, you can't do it properly."
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What's next?
Facebook users across the Indian sub-continent can enjoy free access to all La Liga games for the coming season. Initially, all streams will broadcast without any advertising and can be accessed via the Facebook application on mobile phones and tablets or via a desktop computer.
