English soccer’s Premier League has terminated its media rights contract with the Fox Sports Mexico broadcaster after it failed to make payments owed for this 2024-25 season.
The agreement was ended last week, with the league pulling the feed from Fox Sports Mexico before last weekend’s fixtures.
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Earlier this week, the Premier League announced that the remainder of the season will be shown in Mexico by Tubi, the free, ad-supported streaming service owned by Fox Corp.
Fox Sports Mexico is owned by telecoms and media company Grupo Lauman and not the US media giant.
The Premier League’s four-year deal with Fox Sports Mexico was worth around £50 million ($63.2 million) and was set to run until the end of the 2027-28 season.
The broadcaster failed to honor its financial commitments because of cashflow problems and has also failed to pay several other sports organizations whose TV rights it owns.
In recent months, several properties including Concacaf, the governing body for football in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, American football’s NFL, Liga MX clubs, and wrestling’s WWE have all ended deals with Fox Sports Mexico.
The pay-TV broadcaster held 50% of the Premier League rights in Mexico, with the other half held by media heavyweight Warner Bros. Discovery which shows matches through its HBO Max and TNT Sports services. Tubi has now picked up Fox’s share of the rights.
Fox Sports’ deal with the English top flight only started this season after the league’s contract with Paramount+ was canceled. It had rights to show about 100 matches each season, with 90 covered by HBO.
The league’s global TV rights deals are the most lucrative in the world and the biggest source of income for its clubs.
Overseas broadcast contracts are projected to earn the clubs £6.5 billion between 2025 and 2028, a 23% increase on the previous cycle, and significantly more each year than the £6.4 billion value of domestic rights between 2025 and 2029.
The separation of Fox Sports Mexico from Fox Corp took place five years ago as part of Disney’s £56 billion purchase of 21st Century Fox, with Lauman licensing the brand from Disney and buying international sports rights including the Premier League, NFL and motor racing’s Formula 1 (F1).
This year Lauman agreed to sell Fox Sports Mexico to Fox US and received regulatory approval, but the deal has not progressed.
Fox Sports Mexico’s remaining sports rights include F1 and Major League Baseball.
