🙋🏻‍♀️ Women's Football Just got a LOT Richer

Alot of new subscribers to the newsletter this week. Welcome to those of you who are receiving this broadcast for the first time.

The biggest news stemming from the weekend is that Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions (home of Tyson Fury and Daniel Dubois) have signed a broadcast agreement with global streaming service DAZN beginning on April 1 2025!

This is an important deal and has a few implications.

The first is that it could signal the end of boxing on TNT Sports. The second being it should make fights between Top Rank, Matchroom and Queensberry much easier to facilitate!

The third is that it makes Frank have to eat his words after calling DAZN “DeadZone” for so many years!

Boxing is a funny sport. There is so much change and so many moving parts to it, its fascinating.

More on Eddie Hearn and Matchroom coming to the YouTube channel very soon 👀

Today we dive into another historic broadcast deal. This time for Womens Football…

Female footballers are about to get a whole lot richer!

The WSL has signed a five-year broadcast extension with Sky Sports which will almost double the existing broadcast deal in place.

• Current deal: 3yrs, £7m annually. £21m total

•  New deal: 5yrs, £13m annually. £65m total

There are two fascinating things about this:

1. Sky (the main broadcaster) will show 78 games exclusively. The BBC will show 7 games exclusively. 34 games will be shared. The remaining games however will be broadcast live on the WSL YouTube channel!

2. The deal allows the use of in-game and post-game highlights on players social media channels (something that is not permitted today)

It’s a landmark deal and a move which highlights the sheer growth of Women’s football in recent years.

The thing that was most apparent to me is the volume of games in the package. The most recent Premier League rights deal saw a small uplift in amount of money (4%) but in exchange for a BIG increase in the total number of games broadcast.

In this deal Sky are paying a lot more but similarly they will show a lot more games than they are currently showing.

In theory this is good for the WSL. Exposure is the biggest thing they need at this stage of their journey so the more games available to the consumer, the better.

Which is why a massive portion of the deal was the allowance of highlights and in-game clips to be used by players on their own Social Media channels.

My video recently showed how important it was for athletes and sports teams to embrace tech if they wanted to be successful.

Today, there are many companies which make clipping, posting and analysing sports clips on social media a very easy process. I am looking forward to seeing if any WSL players take the lead here.

With a big broadcast deal of this nature it won’t be long until we see:

• Bigger transfer fees

• Bigger contracts for players

Shoutout to the WPLL for negotiating the deal.

John Textor might finally be free from the clutches of Crystal Palace ownership!

As a recap for those unaware, Textor currently owns 45% of Crystal Palace via his company Eagle Holdings.

However:

• He has wanted to sell his stake for some time as he sees no path to controlling ownership of the club

• His current ownership partners Steve Parish, Josh Harris and David Blitzer have no interest in buying him out at the terms he wants

• He wants to buy another football club and be a majority owner so he therefore tried (and failed to buy Everton Football Club this summer)

All the above leaving him stuck in a very tricky position.

Textor is one of the few owners out there taking full advantage of the multi-club ownership model:

• 45% of Crystal Palace 🇬🇧

• 87.7% of Olympique Lyonnais 🇫🇷

• 90% of Botafogo 🇧🇷

• 80% of RWD Molenbeek 🇧🇪

As you can see however, Crystal Palace is the one in his empire where he does not have a controlling stake and this is proving problematic for him.

Until now!

Sports investment group Sportsbank has reportedly made a bid worth around £230m for Textors stake, valuing Crystal Palace at £500m.

The deal has not yet gone through but it gives CPFC a 2.64 revenue multiple and potentially gives Textor a path to freedom.

Let’s see what happens here before the end of the year.

See you next week.