How streaming platforms are spending on football and sports rights in 2026

For seven years, DAZN spent more on sports rights than any other streaming platform on earth. That ended in 2026. The market-leading position has passed, for the first time, to Amazon Prime Video, on the back of Amazon's $1.8-billion-per-season NBA deal that began with the 2025-26 season. The total pool that all streamers are competing inside is also growing, from $13.2 billion in 2025 to a projected $14.2 billion in 2026, a 7% year-on-year increase.1

For anyone operating, building, advising, or investing in the sports streaming category, the question is no longer whether streamers are spending serious money on rights. They are. The question is how that spend reshapes the strategic landscape, and which platforms now matter where.

The numbers, structured

The platform breakdown

The five largest streaming spenders on sports rights in 2026, by Ampere Analysis projections:12

Amazon Prime Video sits at the top of the list for the first time, at approximately 27% of the total. The combination driving this: the 11-year NBA deal worth $1.8 billion per season (first full year in 2025-26), continuing NFL Thursday Night Football rights in the US, the UEFA Champions League in Germany, Italy and the UK, and a growing portfolio of regional football and tennis rights. Amazon's sports-rights investment has climbed from 18% of the worldwide market in 2024 to 23% in 2025 to the leading 27% position in 2026.

DAZN follows at approximately 22% of total streaming sports-rights spend. The platform was the leading streaming spender since 2018, in part because of its $1 billion deal for the 2025 FIFA Men's Club World Cup (a competition that does not repeat in 2026). DAZN remains the dominant platform for German-language Bundesliga rights, Serie A in Italy, and a global portfolio that includes boxing, motorsport, and women's football. DAZN's 2024 operating losses narrowed to $936 million, against $3.19 billion in revenue, with management targeting profitability in 2026.3

YouTube TV accounts for approximately 14% of streaming sports-rights spend in 2026, anchored by the NFL Sunday Ticket package and its sports-bundle product launched late 2025.

Paramount+ at approximately 8%, principally driven by UEFA Champions League rights in the United States through 2030, plus Serie A and other regional packages.

Netflix at approximately 5%, with selective live-event spending (boxing, NFL Christmas Day) rather than full-season league rights. Netflix has not, to date, made a competitive bid for an annual major-league package.

Where the football money sits

Football rights are the largest single sport-category line in the streaming-spend pie, although the exact share varies by analyst. For the purposes of operators in the football category specifically:

Bundesliga. The DFL secured a domestic media-rights deal valued at €4.48 billion for the four-year cycle starting 2025-26, an average of €1.12 billion per season, a 2% increase on the previous cycle.4 (For the full Bundesliga audience-and-rights breakdown, see the Bundesliga's global audience, by the numbers.) Domestic rights split principally between Sky Deutschland and DAZN.

Premier League. Domestic rights for the current cycle: Sky Sports, TNT Sports, and Amazon Prime Video. The Premier League remains the highest-value domestic football rights cycle in Europe.

UEFA Champions League. The current cycle (through 2026-27) sits across multiple platforms in each major market. DAZN holds the German rights alongside Amazon. TNT Sports plus Amazon Prime Video in the UK. Paramount+ in the US. Sky Italia in Italy. The next cycle, 2027-33, is being marketed by UC3 (the UEFA-EFC joint venture) with a target of €5 billion per year and a "global first-pick" package that would, for the first time, allow a single broadcaster to secure one Champions League match per round worldwide.5

La Liga. Spanish domestic rights split between Movistar Plus and DAZN; DAZN added the free-to-air package (one match per matchday) for 2025-27 at a reported €4 million.

Serie A. Italian rights split between DAZN (the bulk) and Sky Italia.

Ligue 1. The most volatile cycle. After Ligue 1's previous rights tender produced underwhelming offers in 2024, the league has taken a more direct distribution route, including its own platform.

The cost of acquisition, and what it implies

For all the headlines, the more strategically important number is not the rights spend itself but what it costs to acquire a sports-streaming subscriber. Aggregated reporting from sports media analysts puts the customer acquisition cost (CAC) for a paid sports-streaming subscriber in the $40-$80 range in mature markets, rising as high as $120-$150 in saturated launch markets like the United States.3

That number matters because it shapes the strategic value of any asset that reduces it. Customer acquisition is the single largest line on most streaming P&Ls after rights themselves. Anything that compresses the funnel (an exact-match domain, a category-defining social handle, a partnership that delivers a pre-qualified audience) is structurally valuable to the same operator who is spending $1.8 billion a year on rights.

This is the connection between the rights-spend numbers and the wider digital-infrastructure question. (See how streaming reshaped football's domain map for the longer argument.) Rights without distribution is dead capital. Distribution without an efficient acquisition channel is expensive capital. The platforms that solve both at scale are the ones that win.

What is coming next

Three structural shifts to watch through 2026-27:

The 2027-33 UEFA tender. UC3 opened bidding October 2025 with a €5 billion-per-year target. If hit, that would represent a roughly 30% step-up on the current Champions League cycle. The participants reportedly include Netflix, Disney, Apple TV+, DAZN, YouTube, and Amazon, which would mark Netflix's first competitive bid for a major football property.

Regional sports network restructuring. The collapse of US regional-sports-network (RSN) bundles in 2025-26 has created openings for streaming platforms to acquire local sports rights at scale. DAZN's $100 million acquisition of ViewLift in April 2026 is one signal of how this is being executed.

Bundling vs unbundling. YouTube TV launched a sports-specific subscription bundle in 2026. Disney is reorganising ESPN around a direct-to-consumer model. The medium-term direction is bundled-by-category (sports together) rather than bundled-by-content (entertainment plus sport).

For an operator looking at the football category specifically, the implication is straightforward. The spend pie is growing. The structural positions are being negotiated now, in deals that will run through 2030 and beyond. The infrastructure (rights, distribution, customer acquisition, digital surface area) is being rebuilt around the assumption that streaming is the primary platform and broadcast is secondary.