For decades, Brazil has boasted a reputation as being a hotbed for entertaining, unpredictable, and perhaps ‘pure’ soccer. The tradition of ‘joga bonito’, or beautiful play, a moniker applied to the textbook flair of the country’s unique style, has been carried from legends such as Pele and Garrincha through modern-day icons like Neymar and into current national team stars like Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo.
Over that time, Brazil established itself as a global force in soccer, winning the FIFA World Cup a record five times and sending countless talents abroad to spread its cultural reach across the world of soccer. In fact, among Europe’s so-called top-5 domestic leagues (those of England, Spain, Germany, France, and Italy), only those five nationalities are more represented than Brazil, which boasts close to 100 players in those top-flight divisions alone.
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It stands to reason, then, that Brazil’s own domestic competition, the Brasileirão Serie A, would make for a popular TV product internationally. After all, the league is one of the most balanced top flights on the planet, having had 11 different winners (and 12 different runners-up) since the turn of the century. Similarly, it has remained a hotbed for elite talent, with around €120 million ($140 million) of transfers heading from the Serie A to the top-5 leagues alone already in 2025.
This, however, is not the case. In fact, until 2020, it was hard to find broadcast coverage of the Brasileirão anywhere in Europe. In this regard, commented Hernan Donnari, the league has been a victim of its own strength.
Donnari is the chief executive and co-founder of Argentina-based sports rights agency 1190 Sports, and spoke to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport) after the business acquired the international media rights to the majority of the Brazilian Serie A’s games through the 2027 campaign (more on that later).
1190 previously distributed the same rights between 2020 and 2023, and speaking on the initial 2020 acquisition, Donnari commented: “Brazilian content had not been developed so much in the region outside Brazil before we took [the international rights] around 2020. That's something that happens sometimes with such a powerful country as Brazil, where they consume their own content [so much that] they don't [need to] market too much outside Brazil.”
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By GlobalDataNavigating a complex system
In the past, any attempts to market the Brasileirão outside of its home country have naturally been hampered by this inward-looking perspective. Given the rabid popularity of soccer in Brazil, it makes sense that the domestic market has been a focus for these teams, but in doing so, they have left crucial international exposure on the table.
This would be a big problem in itself if it were not also compounded by the broadcast rights distribution system itself, which, while not uncommon in Latin America, stands at odds with most other soccer leagues in major global markets.
In Brazil, soccer clubs are able to negotiate both domestic and international rights on an individual basis. Broadly, these are dealt by two blocs of clubs, Libra and LFU, which collectively make up 19 of the 20 Serie A sides (Flamengo is not a member of either and acts individually). It is these two major blocks that 1190 holds the international rights for, although Donnari said he expects Flamengo to join up with 1190 in the future.
The necessity to negotiate with two different blocs for one league’s set of rights, with the possibility of still missing as many as 19 home games from one of the highest-profile sides, is illustrative of the complexities of the Brazilian market, one that in the past has dissuaded potential rightsholders, and even with a current agreement secure, the situation with the two club blocs has seen the market get more intricate, not less.
“I would say this is more complex than any other agreement we've done. Our first international agreement [with the Brasileirão sides] that 1190 inked back in 2020 was the first one of all the clubs together, instead of each one negotiating its own price,” comments Donnari.
“Now, 2025, five years later, we were able to secure the rights from both LFU and Libra, with the exception of Flamengo. And for us, being able to secure LFU and Libra for the international rights was something complex, but also very important for the future of Brazilian soccer as a whole.”
That “complexity” is a theme that he touches on multiple times through our chat, as the global clamor for sports rights, changing consumer preferences, and market individualities cloud the rights sales process.
“The sports media industry is evolving. It's getting more complex. And in the same way that we sellers become more complex, and the buyers more complex, the organization behind the content has to get more complex. So when you try to sell something that is not well organized, or is dissociated, and maybe you have half of the clubs here and half of the clubs there. It doesn't work that way.
“You need to have a complete tournament with all the assets, a single brand, and a homogeneous approach regarding content, production, value, distribution, narration, graphics, on air, package, and social media. There has to be a single approach to the content.
“So that's what we offer, and the clubs pay for, and that's something that they understand. Because it's not their business to sell rights. Their business is to have successful, powerful teams playing all the tournaments that are available for them, and ours is to maximize the reach, audience, and money that they can get from their content.”
These complexities, he continues, extend beyond rights acquisitions and into the sales process too, creating a sales ecosystem that is fragile and difficult to navigate.
“Marketing sports content has become more complex because the whole distribution media industry is under a [disruptive] innovation process. For some media players, it’s not easy to understand how you embrace new audiences, how it comes that young audiences do not want to watch a complete game, but instead they want 12-minute highlights. What about the goals? The interviews? All the ancillary content that is around the game?”
To address this, 1190 operates its own production facilities, disseminating content from its portfolio of rights across its partnered rightsholders, collaborating with sports properties to coordinate social media strategy and marketing in addition to the primary offering, the 90-minute soccer broadcast.
“Addressing the markets on a worldwide basis, requires all that,” Donnari states. “It's not about just making phone calls and selling the content, but positioning it in an aggregated way, properly.”
Finding an audience
By the time 1190’s first contract with the Brasileirão clubs ended in 2023, the agency had secured broadcast coverage in over 150 territories. With that serving as the basis, the agency is now seeking further growth gains with the aid of its own in-house OTT streaming service, Fanatiz.
Fanatiz, which is focused on providing global reach for competitions from the Latin America market, launched in 2017, and since then has enjoyed strong subscriber growth and external investment, powered by a suite of sports rights that, among others, includes the top-flight soccer leagues of Argentina, Peru, and, once again, Brazil.
While the legacy of the aforementioned legendary players and the marks they have left on Europe, which remains the world’s most developed soccer broadcast market, is significant, targeting markets that display growth potential for the Brasileirão and the Argentine Primera Division is not as simple as selecting the biggest market and entering it, but rather considering a multitude of factors.
“We believe that Brazil has a huge opportunity to grow in Latin America,” Donnari explains. “And the number one opportunity and market would be the Americas as a whole region, and that's important because of the time zone.
“Time zone plays an important role. The kickoff hours of some [Brasileirão] games are too late for Europe, so you need to take that into consideration when you market specific content. In terms of time zone, the Americas are perfect for the content, and we detect there are many opportunities in the Americas in general, including, of course, the United States.”
In the recent FIFA Club World Cup, the first edition of the revamped international club tournament, it was not the European powerhouses of England, Spain, or Germany, nor the hosts, the US, that boasted the most club delegates, but Brazil, which sent Botafogo, Flamengo, Fluminense, and Palmeiras to the tournament. With all four of those clubs reaching the knockout stages, and Fluminense going as far as the semi-finals, it served to advertise the Brasileirão on the biggest stage.
Indeed, the combination of Brazilian and Argentine soccer rights, the continent’s two powerhouse domestic competitions, is the key attraction for a service that isn’t just a primary distribution model, but a complementary piece of an overall puzzle that includes streaming and linear distribution across languages.
Donnari explains: “We believe that complementary audiences are the key. We are going to be able to secure, in this cycle, a coexistence between the OTT rights and a [linear] syndication agreement, including, in several specific markets, co-exclusive transmission rights depending on the language.
“Take the Argentine Primera Division. We sell it to specific takers in a specific language in a specific territory, and that specific co-exclusive right that we sell coexists with another taker that has the same game in the same territory with a different language, usually English and Spanish. There are several different ways to market specific content, including that two platforms could have the same content in the same language.
“We believe, and I think that the market is starting to understand, that some exclusive content doesn't make any sense to defend. And that's something that the industry is not yet ready to accept, but in some territories, this is happening, and I think that what happened with the FIFA World Club World Cup is worth mentioning towards what we are discussing now.”
Though international OTT service DAZN held all-encompassing global rights to the FIFA tournament, the streamer sublicensed those rights in many international territories through a string of non-exclusive deals that saw each domestic broadcaster show fixtures in tandem with DAZN itself.
With that in mind, Donnari continued: “We are trying to reach the biggest audience possible, maximizing the revenue derived from the syndication, plus the sponsorship or commercial rights. So, on top of having the content behind the paywall on an OTT [platform], you need eyeballs to make your property available. So you need both. Specificity is something that sometimes needs to be refined.
“I'm not saying that all the content has to be for free in every practice. That's not my point. My point is that you can play around with the exclusivity characteristics to maximize the goal that the property has.”
Ultimately, Donnari summarizes, it’s a game of branding. Building brand awareness is key to attracting interest and viewership, which naturally is the linchpin to rights sales. While people may not yet be able to pick the Brasileirão logo out of a lineup, the onus is not just on the property itself but its rightsholder to ensure that content can bridge the gap from its domestic market to an international scale.
With more players than ever in the international sports rights space, it is no longer enough to simply agree on any rights deal you can in international markets; distributors must find ways to market the content and bridge the gap so that properties aren’t just available in a market, but are truly visible.
