DAZN Acquires Exclusive Broadcast Rights To Spanish Women’s League For Five Years

DAZN Group, who already own the broadcast rights to the UEFA Women’s Champions League have further strengthened their position in the women’s game by securing the exclusive global television rights to the Spanish top flight, La Liga Profesional de Fútbol Femenino (LPFF), with the first week of matches being made available for free on their YouTube channel.

Within Spain, DAZN will live stream every single championship match, with seven out of the eight matches per match-day on an exclusive basis. Around the world, every match will be available to subscribers on the DAZN platform. This will total 240 matches per season over the next five seasons. Analysis will be provided by renowned Spanish journalists Andrea Segura, Sandra S. Riquelme, Mayca Jiménez, David Menayo and Julio Suárez.

DAZN Espana today announced that the first week of matches will be streamed on their YouTube Channel. This initiative is part of the company’s strategy to provide women’s sport with greater visibility, facilitating access and promoting interest among all fans.

The move is an astute one from DAZN who last summer acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast the UEFA Women’s Champions League in a four-year deal. In order to grow the market, for the first two years of the agreement, DAZN promised to show all 61 matches from the group stage onwards for free on their YouTube channel.

Now, they are likely to entice a significant section of the women’s soccer market in Spain as well as capturing those from abroad attracted by watching the likes of Ballon D’Or winner Alexia Putellas on a weekly basis into their subscription model ahead of them moving certain Champions League matches behind a paywall next season.

Even ahead of this rights deal, Spain was number one on the list of markets watching UEFA Women’s Champions League matches on the DAZN YouTube channel and number two, behind Germany, of those tuning in on the DAZN platform. Over half of all viewers of Champions League matches last season were in the 18-34 age group illustrating the potential of women’s soccer as a growth market.

Speaking to me in May, the company’s Vice-President Katie Smith told me she was confident DAZN Group could turn viewers into subscribers. “There are many things that make a property commercially viable at DAZN, and the acquisition and retention of subscribers is certainly one metric. We’re comfortable with how we will approach converting this engaged audience after season two.”

This weekend was also supposed to the much-anticipated launch of the new English Barclays FA Women’s Super League season. However, all of the first round of matches were today postponed as a mark of respect for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II who passed away yesterday afternoon.

Those fans will now instead be able to watch Lucy Bronze and Keira Walsh – who is said to have moved this week from Manchester City in the sport’s first $500,000 transfer making her the most expensive player in the world – making their debuts away to local rivals FC Levante Las Planas on Sunday afternoon.

In contrast to the inconsistent and often geo-blocked streams of women’s soccer in many countries, viewers around the world were won over by the high-quality production values of DAZN’s soccer coverage last season. In addition to live matches, fans around the world will be able to enjoy highlights and analysis of each match in the Spanish league, pre-and post-game interviews and much more.

Last season’s UEFA Women’s Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Olympique Lyon had a live audience of 3.6 million people worldwide, including broadcasts on DAZN, the DAZN YouTube channel and eleven free-to-air channels in Europe. This represented an increase in viewership of 56% compared to the previous year’s final. Nearly half of those, 1.6 million views, were from Spain.

The CEO of DAZN Group, Shay Segev said “we couldn’t be prouder to build on our commitment to increase the visibility of women’s football by becoming the new global broadcaster for LPFF. We want to make the players, coaches and clubs household names and an inspiration for the next generation of footballers and fans around the world.”