In this end-of-year reflections piece, Insider Sport’s editorial team looks back at the themes that shaped sports business over the past 12 months
By the end of every year, the sports industry pretends it’s pausing for breath. It isn’t. It’s just changing gear. Deals that were signed in a rush get reframed as strategy. Structural problems get softened with talk of “long-term vision.” Success gets measured by scale, not substance.
In 2025, that was harder to pull off. The headlines were genuinely impressive – media rights values climbed, franchise valuations hit new highs, women’s sport had moments that actually broke through to mainstream audiences in ways that would’ve seemed impossible a decade ago. But look closer at what Insider Sport covered this year and you’ll find something more complicated.
In this piece, the editorial team looks back at the themes that defined sports business in 2025.
Editor’s reflections: Growth with consequences
When rights revenues keep climbing, you assume distribution sorted itself out somewhere along the way.
It hasn’t.
The Premier League‘s next domestic cycle gets sold as a triumph. More live matches than ever, spread across Sky Sports, TNT Sports and the BBC. Commercially, it’s flawless, but fans don’t experience it as growth. They experience it as fragmentation. Following one competition now requires multiple subscriptions, careful scheduling, and a level of patience the industry probably shouldn’t count on.
Look across Europe and the pattern repeats. The Champions League‘s future UK setup – Paramount+ and Amazon – maximises value. It does not maximize habit. In an auction room, it’s brilliant but in a living room, less so. Even the Commonwealth Games, a free-to-air fixture for decades, goes behind a paywall in 2026.
None of this is irrational but when added together, you arguably get something uncomfortable: distribution isn’t a technical detail anymore.
Women’s sport, meanwhile, spent 2025 doing something quietly significant. It stopped promising and started delivering.
Ellie Kildunne finishing runner-up at BBC Sports Personality of the Year matters because it didn’t feel like a moment. She truly looked like she belonged there. That’s what progress looks like when it stops being symbolic.
The commercial shift has been just as clear. Long-term sponsorship renewals. Growing rights interest. Expanding partner rosters. This is a market no longer running on belief alone. But maturity brings scrutiny and sponsors now want proof now, not platitudes. Broadcasters want audiences that stay, not just spike. Athletes want structures that reflect the value being built around them.
These two stories -media rights and women’s sport – share something. A loss of innocence, maybe.
Rights inflation exposed the limits of complexity. Women’s sport’s rise exposed the limits of goodwill. In both cases, the easy wins are gone. What’s left is harder and less glamorous: making sport easier to access, easier to follow, easier to justify commercially. Without leaning on nostalgia or optimism to paper over the cracks.
Kieran O’Connor: Premier League and then everyone else
The Premier League has been the biggest, richest and most powerful football league in Europe for some time, and 2025 saw some of its rivals start to get fed up.
La Liga and the Bundesliga have been increasingly vocal about the growing gap, highlighting how English clubs dominate revenue, wages and global reach. Premier League clubs generated over €7.1bn in 2023/24, compared with around €3.6bn for the Bundesliga, while La Liga secured €6.135bn in domestic broadcast rights for 2027/28–2031/32.
La Liga has attempted to claw back some ground, with early auctions, tighter control over scheduling, and high-tech anti-piracy measures designed to boost revenue and protect their product.
Meanwhile, Bundesliga clubs remain constrained by the 50+1 ownership rule, prompting Bayer Leverkusen CEO Fernando Carro to call for an international salary cap to level the playing field.
Even with these measures, structural differences mean the Premier League’s dominance is unlikely to be challenged.
Betting-related scandals
It feels strange to reflect on something which is still unfolding, but it’s hard to ignore the arrests of NBA player Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups. Insider Sport provided live coverage as the FBI stood before cameras and revealed a sprawling illegal gambling and poker operation which shook the sports world.
What made the story even more remarkable was the amount of betting-related scandals that followed in quick succession, hitting the MLB, Turkish football and the UFC in a matter of weeks..
Pavol Neruda, Co-founder of OKTAGON, told Insider Sport while these cases are alarming, combat sports remain largely insulated. He highlighted how strict fighter selection, continuous education and close collaboration with betting operators help prevent manipulation.
However, the recent scandals make it easy to forget cases like West Ham United’s Lucas Paqueta, who was ultimately cleared of all spot-fixing and betting-manipulation charges by an independent FA Regulatory Commission after a lengthy investigation.
Paqueta has since spoken about the intense media scrutiny and personal impact of the investigation, showing the importance of not rushing to judgment. It also serves as a reminder that the more betting intertwines with sport, the more accusations, whether substantiated or not, are likely to arise.
Callum Willams: Multi-club ownership rules need further revision
The debacle between Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest and Olympique Lyonnais that had John Textor at the centre of the fight for a Europa League position was one of the biggest stories of 2025.
Ultimately, the Palace board and fans will feel aggrieved they ended up competing in the Conference League instead not just because the status is lesser, but because of the nature of how the club failed UEFA’s multi-club ownership rules.
Textor should have ultimately sold his 40+% stake in Palace by March 1, 2025 in order for the club to qualify for the Europa League, as he was also the owner of Lyon. But Palace did not have the foresight it would win its first-ever trophy in May when it beat Manchester City in the FA Cup final to qualify for the Europa League.
Since the debacle, UEFA has extended the March 1 deadline, but unspecified to what extent.
The streaming wars just got fiercer with Paramount
In August 2025, Skydance acquired Paramount for $8bn and it wasted no time in making its mark in the sports broadcasting landscape.
The first major move from David Ellison’s company was the acquisition of UFC broadcasting rights. Paramount paid $7.7bn for seven-years (starting 2026) for live rights in the US, and then acquired rights in two key UFC markets; Australia and Brazil.
Paramount’s next move saw it acquire the UK and Ireland broadcasting rights for the UEFA Champions League from 2027 to 2031, beating out established domestic broadcaster TNT Sports and global streaming giant Netflix.
Paramount’s most recent power play to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery appears less successful than its previous endeavours, but the last several months have demonstrated Skydance is determined for Paramount to be viewed as a leading sports broadcaster.
NBA is serious about a European league
What started out as a pipedream for European NBA fans is now appearing to become a reality as the NBA has been laying the groundwork for a NBA Europe league.
Adam Silver has reportedly held discussions with a myriad of sporting clubs across Europe, including FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and AC Milan, to include them in the formation of a 16-team league which has been provisionally set to launch in October 2027.
The NBA has already been working alongside FIBA to run the independent league and has brought onboard JP Morgan to run the financial logistics for the framework of the potential league.
With many of the NBA’s best players today, such as Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić, hailing from Europe, the possibilities of these players playing for a team in their home nation looks both exciting and realistic.
