Disney+ is set to show one La Liga game per week in the UK and Ireland during the 2025-26 season.
Full details of the coverage have yet to be confirmed nine days before the season starts, but sources close to the production — who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships — told The Athletic the games shown would be on Saturday evenings, beginning with Valencia at home to Real Sociedad on Saturday August 16.
Pay-per-view channel Premier Sports will continue as the main broadcaster of La Liga in the UK and Ireland — so are set to show Marcus Rashford’s potential debut for Barcelona at Real Mallorca earlier on Saturday 16, as well as Trent Alexander-Arnold’s first La Liga outing for Real Madrid against Osasuna the following Tuesday.
La Liga’s deal with Disney is similar to one the competition had with ITV, whereby the channel showed 10 of the highest-profile Spanish top-flight matches per season from 2022 until last term.
Dublin-headquartered Premier Sports has the rights for the other 300-plus La Liga games over the season.
In May, Disney+ announced it would show the Women’s Champions League from next season in a five-year deal until 2029-30.
The exact make-up of La Liga’s coverage — in the UK and in many other places around the world including Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe — remains unclear.
This is because the La Liga TV International ‘world feed’ on which broadcast partners including Premier Sports, DAZN and Supersport relied, previously produced by Catalan company Mediapro, no longer exists.
(Gokhan Taner/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Barcelona-based Mediapro lost the rights earlier this year to produce this content, which included the live studio build-up, half-time and post-match coverage, pre-game interviews with players and managers and magazine shows including VIVA La Liga.
In April, La Liga announced Swiss firm HBS (Host Broadcasting Services) and Spain’s TSA (Telefonica Servicios Audiovisuales) as their new broadcast partner, while saying neither company would take over the ‘content generation’ part of the rights.
Broadcasters which received this content for use in their own coverage of games as part of their deals with La Liga have not yet been informed what form it will take for 2025-26.
At the end of last season, around 180 Mediapro staff including presenters, pundits, commentators, technicians and producers at La Liga TV International lost their jobs under the Spanish government’s ERTE (temporary employment regulation) proceedings, with a legal battle ongoing over compensation due to the workers.
Since 2021, Disney-owned ESPN has provided English and Spanish coverage of La Liga in the USA, in a deal which runs through to 2028-29. Hosts, commentators and pundits in that coverage including Dan Thomas, Kay Murray, Ian Darke, Stewart Robson, Rob Palmer, Luis Garcia and Steve McManaman.
Disney, La Liga and Premier Sports were contacted for comment.
Analysis: La Liga looking to become box office again
By Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero
It has been a strange few years for La Liga’s UK TV rights, often leaving viewers unsure as to how they can watch Spanish games.
Sky Sports showed La Liga for more than 20 years before losing the rights in 2018 to Eleven Sports, an online platform founded by former Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani. But when Eleven Sports ran into difficulties midway through its first season showing the competition, La Liga then signed another deal with Premier Sports in 2019.
There was further confusion when Premier Sports was sold to Swedish company Viaplay in 2022, before Viaplay itself announced it would be pulling out of the UK after suffering heavy losses (Premier Sports officially took over from Viaplay again last year).
Disney already has strong ties with La Liga — it owns ESPN, which has shown Spanish matches in the United States since 2021. Hosting a game a week on its Disney+ platform will give La Liga more visibility than on Premier Sports — in 2022, Disney+ was estimated to have 7.5million subscribers in the UK by research firm Omdia — but it remains to be seen what happens with La Liga TV given the problems with Mediapro behind the scenes.
When the one game-a-week deal with ITV was announced in 2023, media rights experts told The Athletic La Liga should prioritise signing with a major broadcaster to regain visibility in the UK.
“You forget what you don’t see, and people (in the UK) have learnt to live without La Liga,” said Pierre Maes, a leading consultant and author on sports media rights.
With stars such as Alexander-Arnold, Bellingham and Rashford all playing in El Clasico, the hope will be a deal with such an influential company makes La Liga box office once more.
(Top photo: Florencia Tan Jun/Getty Images))