The Agency Resurgence: How Legacy Media Rights Firms Are Recapturing Market Control Through Technical Intermediation

IMG has agreed a long-term media rights cooperation with World Rugby that returns the agency to a fuller, hands-on role in striking deals with broadcasters worldwide while also providing broader advisory services. This marks a broader industry pivot: while leagues have spent the last decade fragmenting media packages across Netflix, Apple, and Amazon, a counterforce is emerging. The traditional sports rights agencies—IMG, Octagon, Wasserman—are no longer passive intermediaries. They're becoming architects of the new distribution landscape, leveraging technical expertise and global reach to bundle fragmented rights into coherent packages that platforms desperately need. For commercial executives, the implication is stark: the era of direct league-to-platform negotiations is yielding to a new model where agency infrastructure becomes the real competitive advantage.

Platform Fragmentation Has Created a Hidden Agency Opportunity

MLB's 2026–2028 media rights deals spread national games across six platforms: NBC, Peacock, Netflix, ESPN, FOX/TBS, and Apple TV+. Fans who want full national coverage may need $100+ per month in streaming and TV subscriptions, before local team broadcasts. The strategy maximizes media revenue for MLB — but makes following the sport more complicated and expensive for fans. This fragmentation creates operational chaos that agencies can solve. When rights are scattered across competing platforms with incompatible data systems and broadcast standards, leagues lose negotiating power. Agencies now position themselves as the connective tissue—standardizing rights packaging, managing technical specifications across platforms, and handling complex multi-territory licensing. The paradox is clear: maximum revenue fragmentation has created a new moat for intermediaries who can manage the complexity at scale.

Technical Infrastructure Is Becoming the Real Rights Asset

DAZN has acquired US streaming tech provider ViewLift in a deal worth around $100m (€85.4m) that puts the sports subscription platform into the regional sports networks conversation. This signals a fundamental shift: platforms are no longer content-agnostic distributors. They're building proprietary infrastructure that agencies and leagues must integrate with. Agencies that own or partner with technical platforms—metadata systems, DRM solutions, regional broadcast infrastructure, real-time rights verification—become indispensable to any rights deal. Canal Plus is to enter a new market - Belgium - armed with exclusive Uefa club competition rights, while also striking new deals in Poland, Austria and Switzerland. These regional expansions require agencies with deep technical expertise in compliance, geo-blocking, and distribution partnerships. The deal flow has reversed: instead of platforms bidding on rights, agencies now control the infrastructure that makes rights valuable.

MSB Universe Academy

Build your sport business expertise

From sponsorship strategy to digital transformation — our courses are built for sport business professionals who want to operate at the commercial frontline of global sport.

Explore the MSB Academy →

Rights Renewal Cycles Are Becoming Dependency Points for Agency Leverage

Belgian football's Pro League is returning to one of the country's main broadcast platforms after rights-holder DAZN finally thrashed out a distribution agreement with telco Telenet. The extended negotiation signals a tectonic shift in rights dynamics: single-operator platforms can no longer unilaterally control broadcast distribution. French broadcasters have been invited to bid for LaLiga, a property long held by beIN Sports, in a tender calling for offers of up to five seasons. These renewal windows are now bidding wars where agencies broker multi-platform consortiums rather than single exclusive deals. An agency that can simultaneously manage rights for five broadcasters across three regions—each with different compliance requirements, revenue-share models, and technical standards—becomes the only viable partner for complex global rights. The commercial advantage is no longer in owning content; it's in owning the machinery that distributes it.

Money, Sport and Business

The sports media economy has entered a new phase: rights fragmentation creates operational friction, and friction creates margins for intermediaries. As LaLiga+, the multi-sports streaming platform launched just over seven years ago, is to close down at the end of next month, it reinforces a painful lesson for vertically integrated platforms. Control over content is worthless without control over distribution infrastructure. Legacy agencies are exploiting this gap by positioning themselves as the technical spine that holds fragmented packages together. For commercial teams, this means the negotiation landscape is shifting: instead of bidding against other platforms for exclusive content, smart operators are now asking which agency controls the infrastructure that will matter in 2028. The new competitive moat isn't rights; it's the system that makes rights work.

Go deeper with MSB Universe

The MSB Academy covers commercial strategy, partnership development, digital innovation and organisational leadership in sport — practical knowledge from practitioners at the top of the industry.

Start learning →

Sources

SportBusiness Media (April 30–May 5, 2026)
SportsEpreneur (April 2026)
Insider Sport (December 24, 2025)