In or out? Which major football leagues are leading or following the EPL in taking production in-house? By Adrian Pennington Friday, January 17, 2025 - 10:11
Print This Story
Stockley Park
One of the biggest news stories of 2024 was the announcement by the English Premier League (EPL) that it would be taking its media operations business in-house. Although this does not come into force until August 2026, the move (thus far unconfirmed officially) would seem to end the 20-year partnership between the Premier League and IMG, operating as Premier League Productions.
Each football league worldwide has its own commercial and logistical reasons for operating the host broadcast as it does whether in-house, outsourced, or a combination of the two. Taking a look at how other major football leagues are managing their domestic and international production and distribution, it would seem that the EPL is no pioneer in keeping its operations closer to its chest, but neither is it a laggard. Below is a breakdown of how some key leagues operate.
Spain Host
The host broadcast operation for LaLiga and LaLiga 2 for 2023/24-2026/27 season is managed by LaLiga which hires Mediapro as its official production company. In 2015 a decision was made to centralise LaLiga's AV rights marketing and commercialisation. This sets the basis for how LaLiga income is distributed and how income can be enhanced by improved production values.
LaLiga domestic rights are held by Telef nica, which shows five games per week via Movistar , until the end of the 2026/27 season. This covers 55 per cent of matches, with DAZN airing the remaining matches in a sub-licencing deal with Telef nica.
Coverage and facilities
Mediapro, based out of Barcelona, is in charge of the host production and uses its own OB facilities. This includes 380 live streamed and broadcast LaLiga matches per year and 468 LaLiga 2 matches (462 regular season and six playoffs). LaLiga has centralised graphics and comms, with the rest of production performed on site. Eight LaLiga 2 games are produced fully remotely.
Standard LaLiga games feature 17 cameras second division matches are covered by 13 cameras. Top matches like El Cl sico between Barcelona and Real Madrid are covered with a 22-camera plan. All are standardised on HD 1080p.
VAR
The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) manages VAR across LaLiga and the Copa del Rey competition and contracts the services to Mediapro. The current contract runs until 2027/28 and replaces Hawk-Eye which held the contract between 2019 and 2024. Hawk-Eye is providing semi-automatic offside technology (SAOT) for the 2024/25-2027/28 season.
France Host
Ligue 1, the French premier division, is administered by the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP). Host Broadcast Services (HBS) acts as host broadcaster, in continuation of a longstanding partnership with the league's rights holders. This season those rights holders changed over from Amazon and Canal to DAZN and BeIN Sports. DAZN is airing eight matches per week and BeIN Sports is showcasing one primetime game per week, totalling 308 matches per year. The deal for rights and host broadcaster runs until 2029.
Ligue 2 matches are exclusively broadcast by BeIN Sports, which secured five years of domestic broadcasting rights ending in 2029. BeIN Sports is also producing all Ligue 2 games with HBS acting on behalf of the league, performing venue management, archive management and quality control.
Coverage and facilities
HBS contracts the majority of its facilities from AMP Visual with additional from NEP Belgium. The contribution network has been provided and managed by Orange Events since 2019. The network is fully redundant with hitless switching. All matches are at-the-venue productions although HBS is working on hybrid remote solutions and operates an MCR which has connectivity to the stadiums.
Since the turn of the year, the standard match day format is now HD 1080P from between 14 and 25 cameras depending on the match. This includes aerial, Steadicam and cine-style cameras.
VAR
VAR is centralised in Paris and managed by LFP with HBS providing technical support.
Denmark Host
The host broadcaster is Matchday Production, an in-house entity new for the 2024/25 season. It was set up by Superligaen, the company owned by the 12 clubs competing in Denmark's top-flight football league Superliga, and production company DMC Productions.
Matchday Production produces all 800 matches a year live across Superliga, the 1st Division, Oddset Pokalen, 2nd Division and 3rd Division. The domestic rights holders are TV2 and Viaplay.
Superligaen handles rights and manages relations with the broadcasters and clubs. DMC manages the technical set-up, production and operations.
Coverage and facilities
Matchday Production operates a remote production centralised in the Matchday HQ in Copenhagen. Its four control rooms are able to handle several matches simultaneously.
A standard Superliga match is covered by six cameras in 1080p with an ambition to deliver HDR in 2025.
All 55 of Denmark's stadiums are connected to the Copenhagen MCR via a contribution ring. The contribution ring was procured by Matchday Production to give them full control of the network. It features 10Gbit links to each stadium and 100Gbit lines to the broadcast centre.
Germany's Broadcast Solutions helped DMC create the Copenhagen HQ and also built four vehicles and four flypacks for the on-site facilities.
The main facility is equipped with Grass Valley Kula switchers, Kayenne control surfaces and Grass Valley vision mixers, audio consoles from Lawo and a MediorNet Horizon processing platform from Riedel. EVS provided XT servers as well as its Xeebra platform to handle VAR. Net Insight's Nimbra application enables remote contribution. Graphics are provided by the Danish company
