Good afternoon!
If you are a fan of Belgian football, then I'm afraid I have some bad news for you: it's more than likely you will not be able to watch your favourite team on TV or streaming platforms from this weekend onwards.
Talks with the rights owners DAZN and the Belgian Pro League have collapsed, so for now, there will be no live games screened.
The issue is cash, of course. In a world where football rights are a valuable commodity, owning them is a licence to print money, right? Well, that's the theory at least.
But with a certain few leagues, like the English Premier League, for example, dominating the global football pitch, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the smaller leagues to find broadcasters willing to stump up cash, on top of what they are paying to have a slice of the premium action, for their own domestic matches.
There's no easy solution. Some leagues have gone down the creating their own in-house channel route, like in France. Others have gone down the club-by-club TV route.
It's not clear how Belgium plans to resolve this. But what is clear, though, is that it's important that fans can watch their own football matches in their own country. Football creates shared experiences, helps community cohesion and gives people an escape and a source of lasting memories.
As Bill Shankly, a football manager close to my heart, once said, "Football is not a matter of life and death; it's much, much more important than that."
I used to love football – but as a Liverpool fan, I don't really like it anymore. I will be tuning into live Belgian padel ball instead.
Belgium in Brief is a free daily roundup of the top stories to get you through your coffee break conversations. To receive it straight to your inbox every day, sign up below:
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