It won’t be simple to watch your team’s games in the 2025 Brazilian Championship. In the 2024 one, now, it’s always on some TV channel. Globo – either on open TV, or on Sportv or in Premiere. Next year, the range will expand. Some games will be on Record. To see others, you will need to go to YouTube and access the CazéTV. For others, only in streaming Amazon Prime Video same. Or even on Globo, Sportv, Premiere.
This multiplication of broadcasts is a reflection of major changes in the internal politics of Brazilian teams – and also in the country’s media market.
In recent decades, there have been few times when Globo has seen its dominance in sports broadcasting threatened – if that actually happened. There were occasional defeats, such as when Record exclusively broadcast the London Olympic Games in 2012, but the TV Globo+canais Sportv+Premiere combo was always difficult to beat.
The teams preferred Globo, the advertisers too. And fans became accustomed to tuning in to the plim-plim when watching the games – and also to grumbling when the broadcaster didn’t show their team’s match.
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But the world changed, and Brazilian football split. The two leagues that bring together the main clubs in Brazil, Libra and LFU, say they are working towards the creation of a single block of teams, but the moment is for consolidation around the two poles they represent – a division strengthened by the commercial dispute between groups of media and the growing influence of the financial market on football in Brazil.
Libra and LFU are a direct result of the Mandant Law, approved in 2021, under the Bolsonaro government. The legislation changed the logic of broadcasting rights by establishing that only the home club, the one with so-called “arena rights”, can negotiate the broadcast of a match. Before the Mandator Law, negotiations also needed to involve the visiting team.
This created a knot. The broadcaster agreed broadcasting rights with the big teams. For the little ones, it was take it or leave it. Either they would accept any amount, or the game would not be broadcast and they would receive nothing.
The new rule “empowered” the principal – even if the team was small, the entire negotiation would have to be done with him. This opened up the market. It forced large media companies to worry about the demands of smaller teams if they wanted to guarantee game packages with commercial value. In practice, it challenged the control that Globo exercised for decades in broadcasting Brazilian teams’ games.
The Mandant Law was also approved amid a major spending review by Grupo Globo. Investments in Globoplay streaming drained part of the resources that would go to TV, the values of broadcasting rights inflated in the previous decade due to increased competition – RecordTV and Esporte Interativo, which had been purchased by Turner, entered the disputes.
Globo was forced to choose better what to buy.
Libra, Globo’s ally
To use the language of politics, you could say that the Brazilian Football League, Libra, is the situation, the conservative side.
It is formed by 12 clubs from series A, B and C. Of the ten teams with the biggest fans in the country, six are in Libra: Flamengo, Palmeiras, São Paulo, Grêmio, Atlético-MG and Santos. In other words: of the ten teams with the biggest fans in the country, seven are in Libra (the first on this list) – and this is no coincidence.
Generally speaking, Libra is basically made up of teams that were happy before the Mandant Law came into force. These are the teams that chose to stay with Globo.
In the broadcaster’s proposal, after all, remuneration for broadcasting rights involves a formula that gives more weight – that is, more money – to the teams whose matches attract more audiences.
The agreement between Libra and Grupo Globo includes the rights to broadcast the Brasileirão between 2025 and 2029. It involves exclusivity in the transmission of games whose Libra teams are home, whether on open TV, closed TV, streaming and/or on pay-per-view.
For this package, Globo will have to pay R$1.17 billion, 11% less than expected when Corinthians was in Libra – in July, the black and white team “turned around” and signed with the LFU.
According to the newspaper Lance!Globo’s agreement with Libra follows the following terms:
- 40% distributed equally between teams;
- 30% paid according to the team’s performance in the Brasileirão;
- 30% paid according to the games’ audience.
Libra teams must still receive 40% of revenue from the pay-per-viewwhich should mean around R$200 million per year for Libra teams.
Before reaching an agreement with Globo, Libra also sat down to talk to representatives from Mubadala Capital, a manager that represents the interests of a sovereign wealth fund of the same name in the United Arab Emirates. Mubadala wanted to own the broadcasting rights of Libra clubs for a period of 25 years, an in-line approach with an aggressive profile of manager.
Negotiations with the Arabs did not progress, but they show how the financial market is keeping an eye on Brazilian football clubs and beyond the investments made in teams that adhere to the Sociedade Anônima de Futebol (SAF) model.
LFU, a defiant
Returning to the metaphor of institutional politics, the Liga Forte União (LFU) can be seen as the opposition. Born from the merger of two associations, the LFU brings together the discontented people of Brazilian football, teams whose presidents argue that the division of the broadcasting rights cake along the lines of what Globo has been doing deepens inequality between the country’s clubs.
And there is no small amount of discontent. The LFU is made up of 32 Brazilian clubs from series A, B and C of the Brazilian Championship. Among them, Vasco, Fluminense, Botafogo, Cruzeiro, Fortaleza, Sport and the aforementioned Corinthians.
The dissatisfaction of these clubs was more easily channeled into the challenger league after Faria Lima entered history. THE XP Investimentos saw the split between the teams as an opportunity to increase its influence in the Brazilian football market.
XP became almost an organizer of the LFU, acting as a financial consultant and helping to finance the clubs through the creation of a fund aimed at managing broadcasting rights, in partnership with the manager Life Capital Partners (LCP).
It was precisely the possibility of extra money that made Corinthians exchange Libra for LFU. Despite having the second largest fan base in Brazil and being based in the country’s largest advertising market, the team is going through a serious financial crisis and was seduced by the advance of R$150 million through a loan granted by XP.
In total, by 2029, Corinthians can receive R$1.6 billion for being part of LFU.
Between 2025 and 2027, LFU teams will have their Brazilian Championship games broadcast by Record on open TV, by Amazon Prime Video on streaming and by CazéTV on YouTube – the Google platform purchased the broadcasting rights and will make them available on the channel. Casimiro Miguel because he has a partnership with LiveMode, one of the owners of CazéTV.
This media block embodies the challenge to Globo’s hegemony in Brazilian football broadcasts. These companies will be able to broadcast one game per round. Record and CazéTV will show the same game; Amazon, another. The choice preference will be rotated between them. Like: if “in their turn” Record and CazéTV decide to play a Corinthians match, Amazon will have to broadcast another game; and vice versa.
There is also the possibility, still under negotiation, for teams in this league to have games broadcast on Premiere – the pay-per-view from Globo.
In relation to money, the division in the LFU will be as follows:
- 45% distributed equally between teams;
- 30% paid according to team performance;
- 25% paid according to game viewership.
LiveMode, Record, YouTube and Amazon do not reveal the values involved in negotiations for broadcasting rights.
Faria Lima enters the field
The presence of XP and Mubadala in the negotiations involving rights shows Faria Lima’s interest in Brazilian football. XP itself has a private equity fund that invests in LiveMode.
In addition to the partnership with YouTube that will allow games to be broadcast on CazéTV, LiveMode also represents the interests of LFU teams in the sale of broadcasting rights in different championships.
Another financial market company that invested in LiveMode is General Atlantic, which operates globally and manages US$83 billion in assets (R$470 billion).
Recently, BTG Pactual, Itaú and other managers added to the list of people who would make limers friendly to the football boots.
BTG structured financing of R$165 million for Vasco which, at the limit, could make the investment bank the controller of the Rio team’s SAF. Itaú announced the creation of a structure for investments in sports to be led by Guilherme Ávila, who was responsible for this area at XP Investimentos.
Managers Outfield and Galápagos Capital created a credit rights investment fund (FIDIC) worth R$240 million for São Paulo Futebol Clube, as part of the team’s strategy to restructure its bank debt.
The force of money entered the field. Now it’s time to see if the game flows.
