The Billion-Dollar Game That Nobody Wants to Buy

Women’s football has undergone perhaps the biggest transformation in its history in recent years. The number of players, audiences, viewership figures and commercial interest are all growing, while FIFA and UEFA are systematically investing in its development, from grassroots programs and the professionalization of leagues to new competitions and commercial models. UEFA, for example, has set out in its Unstoppable strategy the goal of making women’s football the most sustainable and investable women’s sport by 2030.

But between strategy and reality lies something no football institution can dictate: the market. It does not decide how much women’s football should be worth, but how much someone is actually willing to pay for it. And it is precisely on that invisible line between desired value and real market value that Liga F finds itself today.

Spain’s top-flight women’s football league, Liga F, is entering a new season with a problem that would have seemed almost unimaginable just a few years ago: so far, nobody has offered enough money for its television rights.

Liga F, Spain’s professional top women’s league, opened a second round of bidding for its audiovisual rights on August 12 after receiving no offers in the first round that reached the minimum asking prices. The deadline for the second round is August 19 at noon, just eleven days before the start of the new league season. In other words, one of Europe’s most important women’s football leagues currently has no confirmed television broadcaster for the 2026/27 season.

From €35 million to a tender without sufficiently high bids

The story becomes particularly interesting when viewed in retrospect.

In 2022, Liga F took a major step forward. DAZN acquired its television rights for five seasons, from 2022/23 through 2026/27, for a total of €35 million, or around €7 million per year. It was a historic deal for Spanish women’s football and an important signal that the market believed in its future growth. Liga F itself described it at the time as a historic global and exclusive rights sale. But the agreement did not make it to the end.

DAZN and Liga F agreed to terminate their partnership early, one year before the originally scheduled expiration. That means the 2025/26 season was the final season of the arrangement, even though the original contract included the 2026/27 season.

The reason is important because it shows that the problem did not emerge overnight. Reports last year indicated that DAZN wanted to reduce its investment in women’s football rights after spending around €21 million during the first three years. One of the problems was the limited use of a dedicated subscription for women’s competitions, which the platform eventually discontinued.

WHAT IS DAZN?

DAZN is today one of the most aggressive players in the sports-rights and streaming market, with a particularly strong position in boxing, where it works with major promotional companies such as Matchroom and Queensberry. But its ambitions go far beyond boxing: at the end of 2024, DAZN committed around $1 billion for the global rights to FIFA’s new 2025 Club World Cup, effectively making it one of FIFA’s key global media partner. Building on that relationship, DAZN also took over the global distribution of FIFA+ in 2026.

Liga F is now asking for at least €7 million per year

The new tender shows how strongly Liga F is trying to maintain the value established by its previous agreement. For the Spanish market, two key packages have been offered. The first package has a minimum value of €5 million per year and covers the rights to all eight matches per round under a pay-TV model. The second package has a minimum price of €2 million per year and covers four matches per round on free-to-air television.

The combined minimum value of these two main Spanish packages is therefore €7 million per season, practically identical to the annual value of the previous DAZN agreement. But the market has so far failed to meet that price. In the first round, which ended on August 10, no bid reached the reserve price for the main packages. Liga F was therefore forced to open a second round. That does not mean that absolutely nobody showed interest. It means that no bidder was prepared to pay the minimum amount set by Liga F.

And the problem is not limited to Spain

The tender is not restricted to the domestic market. Liga F has divided the rights geographically: a) Spain, b) the European Union and c) the rest of the world, and has established different distribution models, including pay-TV, free-to-air, exclusive and non-exclusive rights. For certain packages intended for the European Union, the minimum price is €800,000 per season, while no minimum price has been set for another package. In other words, the league is trying to build a new television economy after losing a partner that was once willing to pay €35 million for five seasons.

The paradox: audiences are growing, but the money isn't

This is where the story becomes more interesting than a simple report about an unsuccessful tender. Liga F is not entering this situation because audience interest has declined. Quite the opposite. According to official Liga F figures, the 2025/26 season finished with 7.5 million cumulative viewers, an 11.2% increase compared with the previous season.

The numbers from the biggest match of the season are particularly impressive. The meeting between Real Madrid and Barcelona averaged 685,335 television viewers, a Liga F record. Across all broadcasts, including simulcasts on Teledeporte, TV3, DAZN and Movistar, the match reached 2,090,354 unique users. That was 27% higher than the same fixture the previous season.

Even more importantly, the growth came after Liga F expanded its free-to-air broadcasting model during the second half of the season. RTVE and TV3 began broadcasting four matches per round, in an attempt to increase accessibility and attract new audiences. The numbers therefore tell two seemingly contradictory stories: the audience is growing, but the value of the television rights has not automatically grown with it.

That may be the biggest lesson of the entire case

Women’s football has made an enormous leap in visibility in recent years. The professionalization of Liga F, the success of the Spanish national team, Barcelona and Real Madrid, growing audiences and increasing commercial interest have created the impression that television rights would naturally follow the same trajectory.

But television rights are not determined simply by the number of people watching a match. A broadcaster has to assess how many of those viewers can be converted into subscribers, how much advertising inventory is worth, how many matches can capture attention throughout the season and whether the entire product can be profitable. That is where the apparent gap between Liga F’s sporting growth and its commercial monetization has emerged.

For the clubs, this is about much more than television

The issue is not simply where fans will watch the matches. Television revenue is one of the key components of the financial structure of professional sport. The previous DAZN agreement provided Liga F and its clubs with a relatively stable source of income. According to financial documentation, around €6.2 million was allocated for distribution to clubs from television rights in the 2022/23 season. For a league with 16 clubs, that is far from insignificant.

Losing a television deal could therefore have a knock-on effect: less revenue for the league, less money for clubs, pressure on salaries and sporting budgets, and potentially a weaker negotiating position with sponsors.

Time is the biggest problem

The new season begins on August 30, 2026, and is scheduled to run until May 23, 2027, across 30 rounds.

The second bidding round opened on August 12, with offers due by August 19. On the same day, Liga F plans to evaluate the financial bids and make a provisional decision on the allocation of the rights, with the agreement expected to be signed within five working days. That leaves Liga F with very little time to find a final solution.

If the rights cannot be sold under the originally envisioned terms, the league will have to choose between several uncomfortable options: accept a lower price, restructure the packages, rely more heavily on free-to-air broadcasting or combine several different partners.

What does this story actually tell us about women’s football?

The easiest conclusion would be that this is a crisis in women’s football. But that would be far too simplistic.

The audience figures show growth. The league includes some of the biggest clubs in the world, Spain’s national team are world champions, public interest is increasing, and the Real Madrid–Barcelona fixture has already broken the competition’s viewership record. The problem is that the growth of a sports product is not the same thing as the growth of its market value. For Spanish women’s football, the question is no longer whether it can become professional. It already has. The much harder question is now this:

Can a professional sports product financially sustain itself?