Sport TV posted a net profit of just €2.25 million on €216.1 million of revenue in 2024 — a net margin of barely 1 per cent — and that number now sits at the centre of a public row between two of the Portuguese sports broadcaster's own shareholders.

Vodafone Portugal CEO Luís Lopes this week rejected comments by NOS CEO Miguel Almeida, who labelled Sport TV a "financial hole" in an interview with the newspaper Expresso. Lopes countered that the channel itself operates near breakeven rather than at a loss, and argued the real financial burden falls on the telecom operators that distribute it, Economia Online reported.

The distinction matters because the accusers and the accused are the same companies. Sport TV's equity is split evenly four ways: Vodafone Portugal, NOS, MEO (Altice) and Olivedesportos each hold 25 per cent. The three telecom operators are simultaneously the channel's equal owners and its main distributors — a dual role Lopes says creates a severe margin squeeze.

What do the 2024 numbers actually show?

Sport TV's full-year results support the "near breakeven" framing better than the "financial hole" one, but only just.

• Total revenue: €216.1 million, up 9.3 per cent year-on-year
• Adjusted EBITDA: €148.9 million, down 1 per cent from 2023
• Operating profit: €1.16 million, an 81 per cent drop year-on-year
• Net profit: €2.25 million, down 59.3 per cent, for a 1.04 per cent net margin

The near-collapse in operating profit has one main cause: depreciation and amortisation charges tied to multi-year sports rights contracts absorbed 99.2 per cent of EBITDA. Put plainly, for every €100 the channel generated in operating cash terms in 2024, €99.20 went to amortising the rights it had bought.

Why are sports rights the sticking point?

Lopes pointed the finger at the underlying cost of content, saying rights to premium sports — above all Portugal's national football championship — are "heavily overvalued." In his view, the pricing problem dates back roughly a decade to bidding wars among the operators themselves.

The timeline he cites is specific: competitive moves in 2015 and 2016, when the same telecom groups now quarrelling over profits engaged in aggressive bidding for broadcasting rights. The current squeeze is, in effect, the deferred bill for that contest — with operators locked into multi-year contracts whose amortisation now eats nearly all of the channel's EBITDA.

There is also a second squeeze Lopes identified on the distribution side: subscription fees collected from Sport TV subscribers fall significantly short of the licensing fees operators pay to carry the channel. So even where the broadcaster's own books look close to neutral, the telcos carrying it absorb the gap.

Neither statement, it should be noted, addresses whatSport TV might do differently at the next rights cycle, or whether any shareholder would consider exiting. Both CEOs spoke about symptoms; neither proposed a structural remedy.

What changes with the centralised auction?

The shareholder dispute lands just as Portuguese domestic football prepares for a structural break: the centralised sale of broadcasting rights, which will replace individual club-by-club deals with a unified auction model.

That shift could cut both ways for Sport TV and its owners. A single auction may temper the fragmented bidding dynamics that, on Lopes's account, inflated rights prices after 2015. But a centralised seller with full control of all first-division content could equally command stronger pricing against a channel that already gives up 99 per cent of its EBITDA to rights amortisation.

For now, the operators' positions remain irreconcilable on the surface — one calls the asset a hole, the other says it barely bleeds — while the 2024 accounts suggest both are describing the same fragile economics from different sides of the ledger. How the unified auction prices Portuguese football will determine which reading survives.