Slicing of Paulista broadcasts makes Federation raise R$ 42 million more

The decision to make separate negotiations on different platforms for the transmission of the Paulista Championship made the Federation increase the collection in relation to 2021.

Under the contract with Grupo Globo, in force until last year, the FPF (São Paulo Football Federation) received BRL 225 million per year for trading on all platforms (BRL 251.6 million adjusted for inflation, according to the IBGE) . According to managers and people involved in the contract negotiations for 2022, the value has increased to R$ 293 million in the current season.

Paulista ended on the last day 3, with the title won by Palmeiras, beating São Paulo 4-0 in the second game of the final.

The increase in revenue is a consequence of the change in football broadcasting. The separate negotiations made Record buy the rights for open TV, Turner for closed channels, Grupo Globo for pay-per-view and the Federation itself for YouTube.

The amount is the highest of the state in the country, but represents less than half of what the CBF receives from Grupo Globo for the Brazilian Championship. For broadcasts on open and closed TV, the station pays around R$ 600 million per year in a contract that started in 2019 and ends in 2024. The pay-per-view agreement is separate.

In the world of South American football, Paulista’s TV contract is lower than that of Chile, where broadcasters pay around US$ 78 million (R$ 362 million at the current price) per season. But it is superior to the Argentine that, for the local contract (not counting the international one, of undisclosed value), the AFA (Argentine Football Association) receives about US$ 63 million (R$ 294 million) each year, added to the packages games from TNT Sports and Disney channels.

The negotiation of the different broadcasting platforms in São Paulo was carried out by the company LiveMode, which brings together former executives of the Esporte Interativo channel, later sold to Turner.

In the last month before the final, the Campeonato Paulista channel was the most watched channel on YouTube among all football competitions. The data is from Social Blade, a website that provides a service for tracking statistics and analysis of social media.

Between March 9 and April 7, four days after Palmeiras’ victory over São Paulo in the decision, Paulistão, a channel of the Paulista Federation that concentrates videos of state games, had 109 million views.

There are more hits than the main national tournaments in Europe. The Premier League had 77 million views over the same period. Added together, LaLiga, Serie A and Bundesliga had 74 million. Even the official FIFA channel had 65 million.

Compared to Campeonato Carioca, which also adopted the YouTube broadcast model, Paulista had 99 million more views.

In the open TV ratings, however, Paulista showed a slight decline. There were 27.6 points on Record in the second game of the final this year. In 2021, at Globo, the same Palmeiras and São Paulo decisive scored 30.1 in Greater São Paulo. In 2020, there were 34. Each point is equivalent to 205,755 people in 2022, against 205,377 in 2021.

“From the profound transformation of the media, we had a huge challenge to guarantee clubs a growth in visibility and revenue for this next cycle of contracts. We built a model that attracted media giants and a list of strategic partners. market and Paulistão broke audience and result records”, says Reinaldo Carneiro Bastos, president of the FPF

But the main novelty was the transmissions through YouTube, with its own team. For this purpose, the Paulistão channel was created, which reached 36 million people after its creation. Live games had more than two million Internet users following the match simultaneously.

Among top professional championships, Brazilian experiences are still not usual in international football. The main tournaments in Europe are not available live and for free on the internet, only through subscription to TV station apps.

FIFA announced last week the launch of FIFA+, a platform for exclusive videos and archive with World Cup matches. But there will be no live broadcasts of the World Cup to be held in Qatar this year.

Having control over the broadcasts allowed the Paulista Federation to standardize the championship’s visual identity, something that is practiced in international tournaments but which, in Brazil, basically depended on the broadcaster that owned the rights. In the final two matches, between Palmeiras and São Paulo, 30 cameras were used. In terms of sponsorship, the initiative served to align marketing actions. According to the FPF, there was a 50% increase in these revenues, but did not disclose the values.​