Aurélien Huyghens is a procurement consultant at Altesia – and a dedicated football fan. The DAZN–Pro League story quickly stood out to him as a textbook case worth analyzing from a procurement angle.
A contract worth €84 million collapses mid-execution. The client is left with no supplier, no backup, and no recovery options.
That’s exactly what happened between DAZN and the Belgian Pro League. Unable to secure distribution agreements with Belgian telecom operators, DAZN declared the contract void by default.
But this case goes far beyond contract law. And far beyond the football sector alone. It’s a clear failure in strategic procurement.
Where procurement should have secured suppliers and ensured continuity, everything fell apart: forecasting, alignment, governance, and risk management.
So what went wrong — and how could a structured procurement approach have made a difference?
What happened
Historically, Pro League broadcasting rights were managed by traditional operators (Canal+, Belgacom TV, etc.). In 2020, DAZN entered as a new player with a different model: handling audiovisual production and then reselling the footage to telecom operators.
But the 2025–2026 season turned into a failure: no operator agreed to take over the broadcasting rights, and DAZN withdrew, arguing that its obligations had become impossible to fulfill.
The conflict was widely covered in the media, mostly from a legal angle. Yet very little was said about procurement.
And yet, this is a true procurement case study: a clear example of what can go wrong when a major contract is not designed as a complex procurement system involving specific market dynamics, interdependent actors, and embedded risks right from the start.
A poor understanding of the market and supplier dynamics
At the heart of the failure lies a wrong analysis of market mechanisms and the interests of the actors involved. A model appealing on paper, but disconnected from reality.
In 2020, DAZN was convinced it could resell broadcasting rights to traditional operators. The model seemed logical on paper: DAZN’s setup allowed production costs to be shared. Except that this model failed to hold up in the real world.
In this tripartite system (Pro League – DAZN – operators), telecom companies are not mere technical relays but strategic players. Historically, they used sports rights as a differentiating commercial lever in a highly competitive market: offering football exclusively meant attracting and retaining subscribers.
With DAZN, they lost this lever… while being asked to buy content produced by a direct competitor. This misalignment of interests was not sufficiently considered.
A contract frozen in a changing market
Between 2020 and 2025, consumption habits changed radically: the explosion of streaming, decline of linear TV, saturation of subscription offers, audience fragmentation, not to mention inflation and decreasing purchasing power…
As a result, “TV rights” became less and less profitable for traditional operators. By 2025, they no longer felt obligated to offer them to subscribers—and profitability was no longer there. The offer no longer matched the demand.
Neither DAZN nor the Pro League integrated this shift. The contract remained stuck in an outdated model. No forward-looking scenario—such as a PESTEL analysis—seems to have been used: neither technological, nor societal, nor economic.
📌 Effective procurement anticipates market shifts, maps out the true interests of stakeholders, and structures practical cooperation conditions with all parties—including those not at the table. This is what turns an RFP into a robust system that withstands market changes.
No contract governance in place
The DAZN–Pro League agreement was not a simple bilateral contract. It inherently required coordination among three parties: the League, the producer/distributor (DAZN), and the telecom operators expected to take over the feed.
But this tripartite setup was never formalised in a governance structure:
- No active tripartite committee
- No visible contract steering
- No shared KPIs or early-warning indicators
- No dispute-management plan or escalation mechanism when negotiations with operators started to derail
Once the blockage appeared, each party retreated to a defensive stance, with no mechanism in place to protect service continuity or adapt the contract to the changing context.
📌 A strategic contract cannot be run on autopilot. Procurement should have implemented active contract governance: a structured steering committee, regular exchanges between all three parties, early-warning alerts on critical indicators (e.g., operator agreements), and formalised spaces for conflict resolution.
No risk management or contingency plan
The DAZN–Pro League contract required two operators to purchase the broadcasting rights. Everything depended on this binary condition: two operators or nothing.
But no fallback plan was defined if this condition was not met.
No alternative broadcasting route, no adjustment clauses, no predefined failure scenarios. And therefore… no manoeuvring room when operators said no.
A contract of this magnitude—high public visibility, large investments—should have included thorough risk analysis:
- What if only one operator agrees?
- Is there a minimal broadcasting option?
- What is the plan B if no distributor follows?
Had these scenarios been anticipated, several solutions could have been prepared:
- Activating direct broadcasting via an online platform or Pro League app
- Using existing digital channels (YouTube, mobile app, tech partners) temporarily
- Adding a reversibility clause allowing the Pro League to take back control if DAZN failed
- Revising obligations based on audience coverage thresholds rather than a strict number of operators
All these options fall under contingency planning, built directly into the contract design. They don’t guarantee success but provide essential room for manoeuvre.
📌 Strategic procurement must secure continuity as much as performance. Preparing for failure is part of the job:
through risk analysis,
through pre-planned technical, contractual, or commercial fallback solutions.
What could have been done differently?
Beyond technicalities, the contract failed because there was no structured collective approach. Each actor stayed locked in their own logic, without seeking a viable model for the whole system.
On the Pro League side:
- Set realistic obligations, without depending on uncommitted third parties
- Pre-negotiate at least one distribution framework agreement before launching the RFP
- Analyse operator incentives seriously and prepare a credible plan B (e.g., direct broadcasting, internal platform)
- Structure governance: contract steering, audits, committees, escalation
On the DAZN side:
- Involve operators early via workshops or non-binding pre-agreements
-
Co-design a compatible value proposition (revenue sharing, box integration, bundles, exclusive windows)
- Negotiate an active role for the Pro League in discussions with distributors
- Trigger revision clauses earlier instead of an abrupt termination
On the operator side:
It was clear that DAZN’s entrance weakened operators’ ability to differentiate themselves. Instead of imposing a model onto them, a win–win compromise was possible:
- Exclusive windows on selected matches
- DAZN offered as a premium add-on
- Bundled models with operator subscriptions
What was needed was to step out of the “buyer–seller” mindset and build a system where each stakeholder could find strategic value.
This is exactly what procurement is meant to orchestrate: a contractual and economic balance that works for all key actors—not just the signatories.
In conclusion: what the DAZN Case teaches us
The DAZN–Pro League case shows that a poorly designed RFP cannot be well executed.
When procurement is reduced to signing a contract—without market insight, stakeholder analysis, active governance, or adjustment scenarios—the result is a fragile system.
Strategic procurement exists precisely to secure every dimension of the arrangement: market, actors, risks, alignment of interests.
It’s not just about clauses. It’s about vision.
📩 Want to secure your critical contracts, anticipate failure scenarios, or build adapted governance? Let’s talk.
PS: Go, l’Union!
