Beyond the Bundle: What the Future of Sports Really Demands — A European Perspective
Fresh off a few weeks of sports media conferences—and deep in my own writing - I read Michael Broughton’s sharp take, And So the Great Rebundling Begins… . He surfaces a truth most of us underplay: capital structure, not just content or UX, now decides who survives, who consolidates, and who owns the fan. Building on his lens and what I’ve heard on the ground these past weeks, I’m adding a new layer to my earlier pieces.
A while ago, I published a three part opinion piece about the future of sports broadcasting, I see this evolution from a slightly different angle — from the trenches of technology strategy, sports rights, and vendor transformation.
In this follow-up, I want to explore:
What this means for European sports and its federations
How to read the financial writing on the wall
And why vendors may end up being the most pivotal players in this next phase of rebundling
The Financial Truth Behind the "Rebundling"
I agree with Michael, that the industry spent a decade chasing the unbundling dream. We believed DTC would give every rightsholder superpowers — ARPU, data, global reach. But cheap money is over. Capital is no longer patient. And sports rights are not immune to the new rules of cash flow and debt servicing. Thanks to Roger Mitchell who provided a great overview of where we stand and pushed us - usually focussing on technology and customers - to think in broader terms. If you did not yet – read his book the Sport’s perfect Storm and you will know what I am talking about.
After working with broadcasters, major market vendors, and Telcos providing traditional bundled data packages, I find myself agreeing with Michael: rebundling is driven by financial necessity rather than ideology. Moreover, we already have the expertise to accomplish it.
But here’s the tension:
In Europe, the sports rights landscape is more fragmented than in the U.S. There’s no single ESPN, no NFL-level monopoly, and fewer multi-billion-euro tech-fueled war chests. What we have is fragmentation, in a variety of areas:
Dozens of national leagues and federations
A highly fragmented rights base, that pushes fans into subscription fatigue
Still a very heavy reliance on public broadcasters
Private investors entering clubs and leagues with very different expectations
The danger I can see is that European sport could be squeezed from both ends — unable to compete at scale with U.S.-backed bundles, and too fragmented to build sustainable standalone models.
We are too many now trying to cook the same soup with slightly different ingredients.
Jeopardizing that the fans don’t like its taste anymore.
The Financial Truth Behind the "Rebundling"
As Michael Broughton rightly points out, the sports industry has spent the past decade chasing the dream of unbundling. The hope was that direct-to-consumer (DTC) platforms would empower every rightsholder, offering increased average revenue per user (ARPU), valuable data, and global reach. However, the era of cheap money is over. Capital is no longer patient, and sports rights are now subject to stricter rules around cash flow and debt servicing.
Roger Mitchell's comprehensive overview of the current landscape has encouraged those of us who typically focus on technology and customer experience to understand the drivers of capital and debt. For those who haven’t yet, his book "The Sport’s Perfect Storm" is essential reading to understand the urgency of this shift.
Through my own experience collaborating with broadcasters, major market vendors, and telecommunications companies that provide traditional bundled packages, I agree with Michael: the move toward rebundling is being driven by financial necessity, not ideology. Importantly, the expertise required to execute this transition is already in place - the distribution know-how, the aggregation infrastructure, and the commercial playbooks all are in some state already. What’s changing is the urgency. Players across the value chain are realising that without smarter packaging, deeper partnerships, and hybrid monetisation models, the economics simply don’t hold.
Yet, a fundamental tension remains. In Europe, the sports rights landscape is far more fragmented than it is in the U.S. There is no equivalent to ESPN, no NFL-style monopoly, and fewer multi-billion-euro, tech-driven war chests. Instead, Europe is characterized by:
Dozens of national leagues and federations
A highly fragmented rights base that often results in subscription fatigue among fans
A continued heavy reliance on public broadcasters
Private investors entering clubs and leagues, each with their own disparate expectations
This fragmentation creates a significant risk: European sport may find itself squeezed from both ends—unable to compete at scale with U.S.-backed bundles, and too divided to build sustainable standalone models. Ultimately, with so many parties vying to create their own version of the same product, there is a real danger that the end result will be unpalatable to fans—jeopardizing their engagement and satisfaction.
What European Federations Need To Think About
European federations are at a strategic crossroads: They’ve embraced DTC (UEFA.tv, FIFA+, etc.), but from what I’ve observed, these platforms often remain PR exercises or marketing backstops, not primary revenue channels. Last week at SportsPro in Madrid, it became clear to me that DTC is mainly a lever to negotiate better broadcasting deals - which was also stated several times. I think it is okay to pretend to go DTC — as long as they stop pretending everyone is now becoming the Netflix of sports.
But here's the problem: if Europe’s leagues don’t rethink how they monetize, and who they partner with, they risk becoming content suppliers in someone else’s capital strategy.
Some federations still assume they’ll hold the power in the next round of rights auctions.
But when bundles reform — and they will — you won’t just be competing for shelf space. You’ll be competing against the entire P&L of the buyer:
Disney has ESPN, but also bondholders.
Paramount Skydance has UFC, but also streaming losses.
Amazon has cloud margins — and patience
The cost of capital determines strategy now. If you don’t understand your buyer’s balance sheet, you’re negotiating blind.
A New Playbook: Fan Value Over Rights Volume
Instead of maximising the size of the cheque, European sports now need to maximise fan value across every tier of the ecosystem.
Free-to-air must be protected, even if it’s a loss leader — it preserves cultural relevance and a unified anchor that counterbalances fragmentation
DTC platforms must evolve from video libraries into data engines and experimentation labs — and some are already heading in that direction.
Rights packages should be modular, built to slot into hybrid monetisation models (AVOD, SVOD, PPV, social-native).
Younger fans must be treated as communities, not passive audiences scattered across platforms.
Because in a world of high churn and short attention spans, you don’t win by being everywhere — you win by being meaningful somewhere.
This is exactly the structural shift Doug Shapiro highlights in Big Media’s Structural Disadvantage: traditional media is competing in an environment engineered for our “default brain.” Platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Reels win because they operate entirely in one system — mobile-first, frictionless, personalised, and requiring almost no conscious choice.
Premium sports broadcasts and long-form content, by contrast, demand active intent. You have to care enough to lean in.
And this might become a new strategic imperative if traditional media cannot win on habit or friction, it must win on meaning. That means leagues, broadcasters and rights holders must organise around franchises and fan communities, not channels and schedules. They need to design continuous “live-ops” for fans — access moments, behind-the-scenes touchpoints, creator collaboration, UGC, events, utility — so choosing them becomes worth the cognitive effort in a world optimised for not thinking.
Lorenzo Zanni's Media Tech half-year review: final reckoning? reinforces this picture from a different angle: 2025 is a year of strategic assessment. As he notes, European media companies are no longer pretending they can outspend or out-scale global streamers; instead, they are returning to their core strengths — local content, strategic alliances, and smarter consolidation. The shift away from vertical integration and towards partnerships mirrors exactly what sports needs to do: stop fighting un-winnable platform wars and start building leverage through fan value, focused portfolios, and collaboration. In a pressured, fragmented market, doing nothing is no longer an option — and fan-centric models are quickly becoming the only viable path forward.
What This Means for Vendors: Infrastructure Will Decide Outcomes
Vendors — the silent infrastructure layer of sports — may become the ultimate power brokers in this next phase.
Because the bundle of the future isn’t a product — it’s a system. And systems are built by vendors.
If federations want to stay relevant, they need vendors who can:
Orchestrate complex rights workflows across platforms
Enable elastic monetization models (AI-powered AVOD, personalized upsells, etc.)
Power interoperability between DTC apps, broadcaster platforms, social video, and more
And most importantly put the paying fan in the center.
As I showed in Part 3 of my series, platforms that allow sports rights to be versioned and monetized across any future — from private cloud to TikTok — are already taking shape.
Over the last months—through SVG, Broadcast Sports Summit, SportsPro Madrid—I’ve heard the same quiet shift in the corridors: fewer faith-based declarations about “going direct” and more grounded conversations about elastic infrastructure, AI that actually ships, and monetization that follows attention, wherever attention moves.
Add Europe’s PSB reality and regulatory guardrails and you get a clear brief: build systems that can flex. Not one “winner,” but many interoperable routes to reach, depth, and revenue. Collaboration is needed here and a change of mindset to pull this off and my hopes are that the pressure will move the needle.
Agentic AI will be the difference. Not “chatbots” or gimmicks — but systems that adapt feeds, allow personalized experiences, monetization paths, and UI layers dynamically based on user behavior, platform logic, and business constraints.
What this might evolve to in the best case is that federations may own the rights, Fans may own the attention...
...But the vendors will own the pipes.
The European edge
Michael rightly centers the discussion on capital — and he's absolutely right that the bundle is back because the math demands it.
But here’s my add-on:
The new bundle is not just financial. It’s functional.
That means success won’t just come from writing the biggest cheque. It will come from those who can:
Design dynamic value chains from archive to premium
Enable versioning, testing, and fast content deployment
Treat rights not as inventory, but as interactive services
And this is where Europe might have an edge. We’ve seen co-distribution work. We have public broadcasters willing to protect access. We have fans who value storytelling as much as goals.
If we don’t try to replicate what is happening in the U.S. — and instead embrace smart, modular, interoperable media ecosystems — we might actually get through this chaos.
The questions remain on the table: How much will culture and mentality shape outcomes? Will European audiences continue to reward public-value access and editorial depth, or tilt toward convenience and one-app simplicity?
We talk a lot about infrastructure and rights, but UX may be the real battlefield. What should a European, regulation-aware “functional bundle” actually feel like to a fan moving between PSB, platform, social, and club apps?
I would love to hear your thoughts about this.
Final Take: The Future of Sports Broadcasting Is Not a Tech Story. It’s a Strategy Story.
We need to stop asking, “Who has the best app?”
And start asking:
Who has the most flexible monetization model?
Who can survive a balance-sheet crunch?
Who can deliver personalization at scale, not just to superfans but to families, Gen Z, and social-first audiences?
Who can make AI and data invisible, but essential to the experience?
Let’s Build This Future Together
Through LaraMedia, I support:
Vendors looking to position their infrastructure, cloud, AI or ad-tech solutions for this evolving rights and monetization ecosystem
Broadcasters and federations who need to build smart scenario plans, strategic technology roadmaps, and meaningful fan engagement platforms
The next decade in sports will be defined by those who can combine financial intelligence, creative agility, and technical readiness.
If you're one of them — or want to be — let’s talk.