Direitos Televisivos nos 40 Milhões

NOS has reportedly presented an offer of €400m to the Portuguese football club Benfica to acquire the TV rights of Benfica’s home matches for the next 10 years (source: TVI), as well as the broadcasting rights of the French and Italian leagues that are currently under Benfica’s ownership. The contract would yield a €40m/year payment for Benfica, with some press (source: Expresso) also indicating that €25m would be to secure the rights and an additional €15m to ensure the exclusive content.

Opinion: We spoke to the company and although they did not confirm this possibility they also did not deny it, making us believe that there could be some sort of discussions ongoing between both sides. This would mark a change in the company’s approach towards sports content since the company has always relied on its partner Controlinveste to access these contents. We recall that NOS owns 50% of the leading sports Pay-Tv channel in Portugal – Sport Tv – with Controlinveste owning the remaining 50%. We believe the reasons behind this change could be related to Altice’s (PT Portugal owner and NOS’ main competitor) increased focus on sports contents (it recently acquired the English Premier League rights for the French market) with the company also making some approaches to other Portuguese clubs, namely Benfica. Benfica matches typically lead audience ratings in Portugal due to the club’s large supporter base, making it in our view the killer content in terms of sports which could explain this potential struggle between NOS and Altice – PT Portugal, especially if the content can be secured in an exclusive way which would be an important edge for any operator to achieve some market share gains. In this respect we highlight that Benfica has chosen to explore its TV rights through its own Pay-Tv channel BTv and it was able to acquire the broadcasting rights for Portugal of the English Premier League as well as the French and Italian leagues, which has allowed the channel to enjoy some success in recent years, with annual revenues exceeding €30m and a reported number of subs of roughly 300k. We recall that in 2014 before Benfica took the decision to explore its own rights, the club rejected an offer of €22.4m/year from Controlinveste to sell its rights; therefore an hypothetical offer by NOS of €40m/year would represent a significant inflation in the sports content in Portugal which we view with some degree of caution, especially if Altice is also willing to engage in this process and could lead to a widespread rise in sports contents costs in Portugal. However we stress that there is not that much more sport content that would justify this increased aggressiveness in the Portuguese market. We note the two other major football clubs Porto and Sporting have sold their rights to Sport Tv and those contracts only expire in 2/3 years’ time. Therefore this is not a short term issue, which highlights why the Benfica rights could be a swing factor if exclusivity can be ensured.

O que dizer?

Pelos vistos está a haver um maior interesse nos conteúdos desportivos em Portugal e os jogos do Benfica são de longe o produto mais interessante.
 

A Altice tem-se focado em expandir os seus conteúdos desportivos e isso parece ter feito aumentar o interesse da NOS em seguir o mesmo caminho.
A NOS que deixava tais conteúdos a ser geridos pela Controlinvest (dividem a Sport TV 50/50), parece estar disposta a uma abordagem mais agressiva.
 

Neste contexto parece ter chegado ao Benfica uma proposta da NOS no valor de 400M e com a durabilidade de 10 anos. Esta proposta resulta num pagamento de 40M/ano pelos jogos do Benfica e também pela transmissão dos jogos da Liga Francesa e Italiana. Este valor divide-se em 25M direitos televisivos e 15M pela exclusividade.
 

Esta abordagem parece conduzir a um grande aumento no valor dos conteúdos desportivos em Portugal, principalmente com o impacto que terá quando daqui a 2/3 anos terminarem os contratos em vigor entre Sporting e Porto com a Olivedesportos.

Portanto, uma proposta interessante mas não tão interessante quanto o impacto “400M” implica à primeira vista.

40M/ano é uma grande valorização da realidade actual.
 

Levanto é 3 questões:

- Como fica o projecto da BTV? Como sabemos o canal do clube não era um projecto maioritariamente financeiro. Este negócio coloca em questão a BTV como hoje a conhecemos. Além disso, negociar com a NOS não era voltar a dar força à Sport Tv?

- Como fica o projecto que está a ser negociado na Liga e patrocinado pelo Vieira? Estou a falar claro do projecto da Centralização dos direitos televisivos.

- Os 10 anos parece-me tempo demais. É um contrato mais interessante no curto-prazo do que no médio/longo prazo.

Aceitavam ou não a proposta?