Sports rights agency MP & Silva, having clinched a surprise 15-year media and marketing deal with the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) earlier this year, is looking at more exclusive games on pay-TV, combined with improved scheduling and production, to unlock more revenue for Malaysia’s local league.

“We are working with the league to change some important limits of the format, and the championship, and make it a better pay-TV product,” explains MP & Silva’s founding partner, Andrea Radrizzani. “Adding more exclusivity on pay-TV is very important.”

Free-to-air channels will still air some matches, likely including popular properties such as the annual Malaysia Cup tournament, but overall breadth of terrestrial coverage will probably reduce. “The quality will be good, but the quantity will probably be less,” Radrizzani tells Media Business Asia.

The sports agency is currently hammering out proposed changes to the timing and delivery of matches with the FAM, ahead of taking agreed commercial packages to the market around April, with an eye on turning live local games into a driver property for pay-TV.

Buyers could include sports channels such as Eurosport, Fox Sports as well as other potential new channel entrants, in addition to local pay-TV platforms, Astro and TM.

In Malaysia, domestic M-League games are well attended, with sizable fanbases for local teams, but monetization has proved challenging in the past. “There are three elements to succeed: better scheduling, better production and more exclusivity on pay-TV,” Radrizzani says. 

The 15-year contract with FAM, running from 2016 to 2030, is estimated at US$350 million (RM1.26 billion) or ~US$23 million a year, making it the largest of its kind for a local league in Asia.

If all goes to plan, benefits from MP & Silva’s approach could start to materialize after about three years. “I expect we will reach a good result in terms of visibility and income from the second cycle,” Radrizzani says. “Normally, three years would be enough for us to change and see some good results.”

More local leagues

The pact with FAM forms part of a bigger global push by MP & Silva to diversify its revenue base, having also taken an advisory role with football leagues in Belgium and Poland in 2014, each lasting six years. 

Having assembled a strong portfolio of international properties, Radrizzani wants a few more long-term deals with local leagues. His focus is on markets with rising consumption of digital media or pay-TV, where rights-holders of well-established, consolidated sports could benefit from assistance on media and marketing.

Such agreements, anchored around a longer-term commitment and a strategic shift in direction, offer local leagues and federations greater stability in terms of finance, allowing them more scope to invest, but can take time to pitch and put together.

Potential opportunities in Asia include football in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, basketball in the Philippines, and baseball in Japan and Korea. 

MP & Silva had struck a six-year pact with Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League early last year, but the deal unravelled after a payment dispute, the only instance where an agreement ended prematurely over the last eight years.

Overall, Southeast Asia continues to promise revenue growth for MP & Silva for all its business lines, especially in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. 

Earlier this month, the agency also announced a six-year deal focused on developing commercial opportunities for national football teams in Singapore.

Alongside Japan, Indonesia is also one of MP & Silva’s largest markets by revenue, where the agency distributes Premier League games on several pay-TV platforms, although excluding the country’s largest, MNC Sky Vision. 

The agency has also secured rights for European Champions League football for Indonesia and Thailand, starting from next season.