It Costs More to Watch Football in the UK Than France, Spain and Germany

Paramount will become the new broadcasters of Champions League football in the UK from 2027, taking over from TNT Sports.

Now owned by Discovery Plus, TNT attempted to hold onto its rights for Europe’s elite football competition but was beaten in the bidding process by Paramount Skydance, a US-based media network whose portfolio includes Nickelodeon, MTV, Paramount, Comedy Central and CBS.

CBS has become famous for its Champions League coverage creating viral moments, often involving pundits Micah Richards, Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher, alongside presenter Katie Abdo. Their ability to lean into lighthearted discussions and comedic chemistry has made the CBS studio almost as newsworthy as what takes place on the pitch.

Paramount’s acquisition of Champions League football, through a bid described as ‘significantly more’ than TNT’s £1billion offer to retain their rights, has lead to concerns over the cost of watching football in the United Kingdom. With domestic, European and international football coverage split over a variety of free-to-air and subscription-only packages.

Already in the United Kingdom fans must pay notable subscription fees if they want to access as much football as possible. As such, the extra cost of £4.99 monthly for Paramount won’t go down well.

Indeed, fans will be forgiven for thinking they are overpaying for their beloved sport, with many assuming it must surely be cheaper to watch football overseas. With that in mind, GIVEMESPORT has done a little research into how much it costs to watch in France, Spain and Germany compared to the UK.

Starting in the United Kingdom, Sky Sports have long played a key role in the increased visibility and commercialisation of top flight English football since 1991. That said, they now share broadcasting rights with TNT Sports. For £35 a month, the subscription grants access to 215 live Premier League matches throughout the season, 80% of all televised matches, including every Sunday 2pm kick-off. This subsctipoin also covers all Carabao Cup games.

TNT Sports charge £23 monthy, as they cover Premier League football, but this also grants fans access to Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League games. Of course, neither broadcaster can show 3pm kick-offs on Saturday, due to the blackout rule (which means, no matter how much you pay, it’s impossible to legally watch all games via the official channels).

Amazon Prime also pick up a number of Champions League fixtures at £8.99 per month, and have first pick of the Champions League games on Tuesday evenings for the next four years.

FA Cup football can be shown on TNT Sport, as they share broadcasting rights with the BBC. In partnership with TNT, the BBC will broadcast 14 FA Cup fixtures per season for the next four years. Although this is seen as free-to-air football, British television stipulations mean that viewers must pay a TV licence fee of £14.54-per-month to watch any programmes broadcast live by the BBC or on BBC iPlayer.

We’ve not included the Paramount subscition of £4.99 in the table below, as they won’t be taking over from TNT Sports until 2027. Even then, Amazon Prime will retain the same rights to show the Tuesday fixtures.

Ligue 1 became the first of Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues to create their own direct-to-consumer streaming service. This came after the French Professional Football League’s (LFP) five-year deal with subscription streaming service DAZN was terminated after just one season. Although the lack of revenue may be a concern for clubs, it’s good news in the short team at least for fans. Indeed, supportets need to pay just £9.99 to watch their teams play in France via the newly created service Ligue 1+.

Between 1984 and 2024, Canal+ aired Ligue 1 games but they opted against bidding for domestic rights to the competition after a break down in its relationship with LFP. They do, however, still air Champions League match as an official TV broadcast partner of UEFA. For €29.99 (£26.27) a month, you get access to all Champions League, Europa League, and Europa Conference League. On top of that, you also get all Premier League and La Liga games covered. This offer also includes access to BeIN Sports and EUROSPORT.

Separately, you can pay for BeIN Sports at €15 (£13.14) per month, but this only gives you access to one Ligue 1 fixture per matchday, but does offer Ligue 2, Coupe de France, Bundesliga La Liga and FA Cup coverage.

To watch Champions League and other UEFA competitions in Spain fans have to go via Telefonica, who own the exclusive rights and air the games through their Movistar+ pay-TV platform. In 2025, reports suggested they are set to spend €1.46bn for permission to broadcast for a further four seasons – at a cost of €366m per season, up 14.4 percent when compared to the last deal with UEFA signed in September 2023. That fee also includes rights to cover the UEFA Youth League and Super Cup.

For those with a Movistar subscription, they can pay €23 per month to get the UEFA action, but can instead pay €50 to upgrade that package to cover La Liga football, as well as all Copa del Rey games, and the Spanish Super Cup. Indeed, Telefonica also own the rights to show domestic games – offering La Liga action at €35 a month (if you don’t care for European football).

However, as La Liga sold the rights to Movistar and DAZN for five seasons – from 2022-23 to 2026-27 – thiz means only five games per match day will be shown on each chanel – although Movistar has the right to broadcast three full matchdays. So to get the full amount of weekly games, you’ll have to pay €29.99 to DAZN, which covers five matches on 35 of the 38 match days. This also includes La Liga 2, Premier League, Bundesliga, and Serie A games.

Finally, GOL Television currenlty broadcast one match per day on free to air television, with the limitation that it will never be one in which a club from European competitions participates.

According to Amazon Prime Germany, for the usual €8.99 monthly subscription fee, Prime Video will broadcast the ‘top match on Tuesdays of every UEFA Champions League matchday in the 2025/26 season’. This includes matches from the play-offs up to the semi-finals. It will show a match featuring a German team on Tuesdays, as long as a German team is participating in the competition.

For €44.99, you can get ‘over 90 percent’ of Champions League games on DAZN. On top that, the fee also gets fans a selection of Bundesliga games, including the Saturday Konferenz, which shows four or five games simultaneously on Saturday afternoons. While there are also La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, FA Cup, and European World Cup Qualification fixtures.

Sky Deutschland is still the main provider of Bundesliga acton, and will be until 2029 at a cost of €29.99 per month. Per SVG Europe, it now shows 87 percent of the 617 games of the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, as well as the relegations and the Super Cup. Beyond that, starting from from 2025/26, RTL Deutschland will show 33 matches per season (for four seasons). This comes for free, via channels RTL or Nitro and simultaneously on streaming service RTL+.

RTL also share domestic rights over the DFB-Pokal coverage with public broadcaster ZDF, in a four-year deal running through the 2029-30 season. But that doesn’t start until the the 2026-27 campaign, with Sky Deutschland, ZDF, and ARD currenlty holding the rights.

Conclusion

So there you have it. At £81.53 per month, it costs more to watch football in the UK than any of the other selected nations. Although the gap isn’t quite as big as some might suspect. Indeed, Spain and Germany aren’t that far beind at £70.09 and £68.13 respectively. But France offer up football at the best value, costing just £49.40 to watch all the games monthly.