Spanish soccer’s top-tier men’s LaLiga has today unveiled the re-awarding of domestic broadcast rights covering the second half of the 2024-25 season, as well as its 2025-26, and 2026-27 seasons, to telecoms giant Telefonica.

in total, Telefonica - which will cover the games via Movistar Plus - will pay €1.29 billion ($1.40 billion) for five of the 10 LaLiga games per week, across the latter half of 2024-25 and each of the next two campaigns in full. It will also cover three full game weeks in each of 2025-26 and 2026-27.

The announcement essentially means LaLiga has awarded the rights to Telefonica, which will continue to share domestic rights with streaming giant DAZN, for the second time.

An original deal struck between Telefonica, DAZN, and LaLiga from December 2021 initially ran up until the end of 2026-27, but the rights were then re-tendered after LaLiga was urged to do so by the CNMC, the Spanish competition regulator.

The watchdog successfully argued that at the time of the original deal, Telefonica should not have been allowed to buy rights for over three years - as opposed to the five years included in the original tie-up - on account of its ownership of Digital Plus, the satellite TV business in which it took a majority stake just under a decade ago.

After those restrictive term limits were scrapped, Telefonica was able to take part in a new tender process and bring the deal up to the same length as LaLiga’s DAZN tie-up.

 LaLiga has said that it “promoted this award due to the legal uncertainty that could arise from Telefonica’s commitments in the Digital+ merger.”

The Spanish league has stated that with this tie-up, “it manages to maintain the disruptive configuration resulting from the recent domestic market awards, which has led to a better distribution of content and thus facilitates greater access … for fans.”

This tender does not affect the rights held by DAZN, which also runs through 2026-27.