In a significant development in Brazilian football, Liga Forte União (LFU) and Libra, two rival collectives, have announced their collaboration to sell broadcast rights to Campeonato Brasileiro Série B. This move marks a major step forward in negotiations to structure a single league in national football.
The agreement between the two rivals comes after the premature termination of a deal between the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) and Brax Sports Assets agency. The CBF-Brax deal had sold broadcast rights for 2024 Série B to five entities including TV Brasil, Band, SporTV, Premiere and Goat. However, this arrangement hit trouble when rights payments were not made to the CBF.
This new pact is seen as an opportunity for greater collaboration between LFU and Libra following years of competition over individual teams. Both sides are hopeful that this joint sale will serve as a catalyst towards achieving this goal.
Member composition
The dominance of LFU is evident with its 16 members compared with just four from Libra. The former includes Amazonas, América-MG among others while Ferroviária and Paysandu are part of the latter.
Prior to their union for Serie B rights sales, both collectives had completed individual sales processes related to Serie A. In Q1 2024 Globo acquired exclusive platform-neutral rights from all home matches of Libra clubs in Serie A from 2025-2029.
LFU then partnered with e-commerce giant Amazon along with commercial broadcaster Record and video-sharing platform YouTube from 2025-2027. These deals granted exclusive platform-neutral rights along with linear free-to-air rights and digital free-to-air rights to a selection of matches.
Future of Brasileirão’s domestic media rights
To complete the Brasileirão’s domestic media rights cycle, Globo last month acquired a package of LFU home matches. This included exclusive rights to 38 top LFU matches per season, pay-per-view rights to the same selection also acquired by Record and YouTube, and exclusive rights to all remaining home matches of LFU clubs in the Brasileirão.
In 2025, Libra will have nine Serie A clubs including Atlético-MG, Bahia among others while LFU will have 11 Serie A clubs including Botafogo, Ceará among others.
The union between these two rivals is seen as a significant step towards maximizing revenues for Serie B. Flávio Horta Jr., president of Libra’s Volta Redonda expressed his optimism stating that this pioneering spirit would serve as an example for all other properties and divisions. With just one month left before the new season starts on April 5th, it remains to be seen how this collaboration unfolds.
