Consolidation in Media and Sports Ownership: Banijay, All3 and the Lessons for Club Mergers

Fans are losing coherent access to matches and highlights — here's what the Banijay–All3 signal means for clubs, rights and competition

Hook: If you’ve been frustrated by fragmented highlights, surprise paywalls for simple match clips, or sudden changes in where your club’s games are streamed, you’re seeing the frontlines of a larger shift. The Banijay–All3 talks in early 2026 are more than a TV-production story — they’re a canary in the coal mine for how consolidation in media and club ownership will reshape sports rights, competition and fan access.

Executive summary — the key signal and why it matters now

In January 2026 industry reporting confirmed deep discussions between Banijay and All3Media owner RedBird IMI about a production-assets merger. This move follows Banijay’s earlier rollups (Zodiak, Endemol Shine) and underscores a clear market drive: scale for content, scale for distribution leverage, and scale for data and international reach. For sports ecosystems, that same logic is accelerating in club ownership and rights markets. When content groups consolidate, they gain market power over distribution, packaging, and the economics of highlights and rights — and that power quickly flows into how sports content is bought, sold and presented to fans.

Bottom line for sports stakeholders:

• Consolidation in production and distribution raises the price and complexity of rights deals.
• Club ownership consolidation (multi-club groups, investor platforms) amplifies bargaining and cross-promotional power.
• Fans risk reduced access, higher costs, and homogenised coverage unless leagues, regulators and clubs act strategically.

What happened with Banijay and All3 — and why the entertainment playbook translates to sport

Banijay’s approach over the last decade has been to acquire high-value producers to build a global catalogue and stronger negotiating clout. All3Media’s parent RedBird IMI entering serious talks signals another tier of scale. This is not an isolated trend: late 2025 and early 2026 saw a flurry of deals across entertainment, streaming and tech aimed at stacking content libraries and distribution channels.

Why does this matter for sport? Because sports content is the most valuable live content on TV and streaming platforms. When production companies and distributors consolidate, they can:

• Bundle highlights and archive footage into high-value packages;
• Control which platforms get priority for distribution and monetisation;
• Use aggregated data from multiple properties to optimise pricing and targeting.

Those capabilities mirror what large club groups already use to increase revenues: centralised marketing, shared digital platforms, and cross-club sponsorship packages. Combine the two trends and you get vertical layering of market power — content owners with distribution reach working alongside club groups that control fan attention.

“Consolidation will be the buzzword of 2026.” — industry reporting in early 2026, reflecting a wider shift that includes production houses, broadcasters, and sports investors.

How club ownership consolidation is evolving in 2026

Multi-club ownership models and investor groups expanded rapidly through the early 2020s; by 2026 they’re a dominant force in many leagues. Examples like City Football Group and Fenway Sports Group showed the model’s advantages years ago: shared scouting, unified commercial deals, and platform-level sponsorships. Investors and private-equity-backed groups have leaned into this model, creating logistical and commercial efficiencies.

Key 2026 characteristics of club ownership consolidation:

• Portfolio strategy: Groups actively manage squads across divisions and countries to optimise player pathways and transfer returns.
• Centralised media assets: Owners build or buy streaming and content platforms that distribute highlights, docs and membership content across clubs — often built as modern, resilient platforms like edge-powered PWAs to reach fans across devices.
• Data-driven monetisation: Cross-club audience data refines pricing, merchandising, and targeted sponsorships at scale — a trend examined in modern data-fabric and live social commerce thinking.

Media rights consolidation and its compound effect

Media consolidation changes who negotiates rights and what leverage they bring. When a few large producers and distributors control a large share of compelling content (including sports), rights markets move from many-to-many to a more concentrated many-to-few dynamic. That creates bargaining asymmetry.

Impacts we’re seeing in 2026:

• Rights fees remain at premium levels for top-tier property, but distribution fragmentation forces clubs to sell in segmented packages (streaming-only bundles, highlights, short-form rights).
• Aggregated production houses package highlights and archive content into direct-to-fan products, bypassing local broadcasters.
• Smaller clubs lose leverage; their games are bundled with regional packages or treated as content fillers unless leagues mandate minimum exposure.

Competition effects — sporting fairness, financial balance and ecosystem health

Consolidation brings clear economic logic: scale reduces costs and increases bargaining power. But sports competition depends on balance. Let’s break down the main risks:

1. Financial imbalance and sporting integrity

Club groups that are vertically integrated with media partners can monetise exposure more effectively. They can cross-promote, secure premium sponsorships for multi-club deals, and push fan content into owned channels. That can widen the gulf between portfolio-backed clubs and independent clubs with local revenue bases.

2. Scheduling and broadcast prioritisation

When distribution partners have stakes across leagues or clubs, they can influence scheduling for maximum commercial return — sometimes at odds with competitive fairness (e.g., primetime windows for certain clubs, more coverage for portfolio clubs).

3. Fan experience and access

Fans face more paywalls, geoblocks, and fragmentation of highlights. Consolidated media groups may gate short-form clips that previously were freely available on club channels, redirecting fans into paid ecosystems.

Real-world signals from 2025–2026 you need to watch

• Production mergers (Banijay & All3 early-2026 talks) — signal for larger content library strategy.
• Streaming giants doubling down on live sports rights via long-term deals (ongoing 2024–2026 wave).
• Multi-club investment rounds and PE backers consolidating portfolios (continued into 2026).
• Regulatory scrutiny increasing in EU and other markets — competition authorities reviewing vertical deals where media and distribution overlap with club ownership.

Actionable playbook — what clubs must do now (practical steps)

Clubs can’t sit passively while market power converges. Below are immediate, practical actions clubs and leagues should implement in 2026 to protect competitive balance and fan access.

For clubs (especially smaller and independent clubs)

• Build or join cooperative distribution: Form consortia for highlights and streaming distribution to negotiate as a block and retain direct-to-fan access — think like microbrands and cooperatives in the microbrand bundle playbook.
• Diversify revenue streams: Invest in local sponsorships, matchday experience, youth development monetisation, and digital fans memberships to reduce dependence on a single rights buyer.
• Protect short-form content: Draft contract clauses that ensure clubs retain the right to publish short highlights and social clips for free or low-cost to maintain fan engagement.
• Adopt transparent financial reporting: Show sponsors and regulators how rights revenues are allocated to strengthen claims for equitable revenue sharing.

For leagues and federations

• Mandate minimum exposure guarantees: Require league contracts to include minutes-of-coverage or minimum highlight allocation for all clubs.
• Standardise rights packaging: Limit over-fragmentation by defining standard bundles that protect smaller-market matches.
• Support governance reforms: Require fan representation on key commercial committees and apply conflict-of-interest rules for owners with media ties.

For clubs with portfolio owners

• Separate competitive operations: Maintain distinct sporting governance for each club to prevent undue transfer/channelling advantages.
• Negotiate clear non-exclusivity for local rights: Preserve the right for local broadcasters and community platforms to carry matches or highlights — and insist on transparent rotation rules similar to modern digital PR and discoverability standards for content.

What regulators and policymakers should do

Market concentration merits regulatory response to preserve competition. In 2026 regulators must prioritize sports-specific guidance:

• Scrutinise vertical integration: Review deals where a media or production group gains preferential access to club-owned content or distribution — a process that needs the same scrutiny used in antitrust tracking and judgments.
• Enforce access to short-form highlights: Consider rights to short highlights as public-interest content to maintain free discovery and fan engagement — including exceptions for highlights shown on social platforms and in transit formats like snackable, in‑transit video.
• Enable data portability: Mandate that fan and viewership data collected by consolidated platforms be portable or anonymised for competition fairness — and usable by clubs through modern data-fabric approaches.

What fans can do — practical steps to protect access and community coverage

• Support club channels and memberships: Small subscriptions keep independent clubs financially healthy and reduce their vulnerability to extraction by consolidated buyers.
• Demand transparency: Ask clubs and leagues how rights revenues are shared and whether highlights remain accessible.
• Use multiple platforms: Diversify where you follow sport — local radio, club apps, short-form aggregators — to avoid total dependency on a single corporate ecosystem. Consider interoperable community strategies and data portability tactics similar to modern community-hub playbooks.
• Back community journalism: Subscribe to local sports outlets; they provide the grassroots coverage big conglomerates often prune away.

Commercial partners and sponsors — how to adjust strategy in 2026

Sponsors must redesign deals for a consolidated market.

• Negotiate cross-platform rights: Ensure sponsorships include social and short-form activations across ownership portfolios.
• Insist on measurement standards: Standardise audience metrics across platforms to avoid inflated, non-comparable reach claims — an issue that emerging explainability and measurement APIs are starting to address in adjacent industries (live explainability APIs).
• Prefer distributed deals: Work with consortia that guarantee coverage for lower-tier clubs to reach underserved markets at lower CPMs.

Future predictions — what consolidation will look like by 2028–2030

Based on 2025–2026 deal momentum, here’s a data-driven forecast of likely outcomes by 2028–2030:

• Fewer, larger rights buyers: A handful of media platforms and production houses will control the majority of premium domestic and international rights.
• Bundled global packages: Leagues will increasingly sell packages that span regions, with centralised marketing and subscription bundles.
• Higher paywalls for premium short-form content: Expect exclusive archives and documentary content to be monetised behind subscriptions; free discovery clips will be contested politically and legally.
• Regulatory interventions: Antitrust and media regulators will develop sport-specific rules, particularly around cross-ownership and access to highlights — and courts and judgement trackers will become important references (see antitrust tracking).

Case study: Applying the lessons — a hypothetical mid-tier league

Imagine a mid-tier European league in 2026 negotiating a new media deal. The landscape: two major producers (one global), one streaming giant, and several local broadcasters. Here's a defensive playbook that uses the lessons above:

1. Form a sellers' consortium including all clubs to centralise negotiation leverage and protect small-club exposure.
2. Insist on a base rights fee plus performance-linked revenue share, ensuring predictable income for smaller clubs while allowing upside.
3. Include a short-form rights carve-out so clubs can freely publish highlights for fan engagement on social channels.
4. Require bidders to commit to minimum broadcast slots for every club and transparent rotation criteria to avoid favoritism.
5. Negotiate robust data-sharing clauses so clubs keep a portion of fan data for direct monetisation and CRM.

How Banijay–All3 acts as a lens — not a one-to-one playbook

The Banijay–All3 talks expose the entertainment industry's appetite for scale and mirrored capabilities that sports groups are already pursuing. But the sports ecosystem has additional layers: competitive fairness, league governance and passionate local fanbases. That means policies that work for TV and drama production can't be copied wholesale. Instead, sports stakeholders must adapt entertainment consolidation strategies to sports-specific governance and public-interest safeguards.

Key takeaways — what every stakeholder should remember

• Consolidation is accelerating: Banijay & All3 are examples, not anomalies. Expect more vertical deals through 2026.
• Market power impacts rights, pricing and access: Bigger players can repackage content and set higher thresholds for distribution.
• Clubs must act now: Cooperative bargaining, content protections and diversified revenue reduce vulnerability.
• Regulation will follow: Policymakers will need sport-specific remedies to maintain competition and fan access.
• Fans are a lever: Direct support for clubs and transparency demands can counterbalance market consolidation.

Final recommendations — practical next steps you can use today

• Clubs: Launch a short-form rights policy review and draft clauses to protect highlight access.
• Leagues: Implement a minimum-exposure clause for upcoming rights tenders.
• Fans: Subscribe to your club’s official channels and support local sports journalism.
• Sponsors: Re-evaluate exclusivity clauses and demand standardised metrics across platforms.
• Regulators: Prioritise cases where media consolidation overlaps with club ownership or distribution deals.

Call to action

Consolidation is not an abstract corporate trend — it will change how you watch, follow, and pay for sport. If you care about fair competition and accessible coverage, start where you can: support local clubs, demand transparency in rights deals, and ask your league what protections they’ve negotiated for smaller clubs and fans. Stay informed, stay vocal, and subscribe to reliable, local sports coverage that holds owners and media partners to account.

Want deeper analysis for your club, league or sponsor team? Reach out to our newsroom for bespoke briefings, model contracts and a checklist to safeguard rights and fan access in 2026’s consolidated market.

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