diff --git a/libavformat/rtsp.c b/libavformat/rtsp.c
index d574797199..52f52a1056 100644
--- a/libavformat/rtsp.c
+++ b/libavformat/rtsp.c
@@ -1146,6 +1146,8 @@ start:
     if (content_length > 0) {
         /* leave some room for a trailing '\0' (useful for simple parsing) */
         content = av_malloc(content_length + 1);
+        if (!content)
+            return AVERROR(ENOMEM);
         ffurl_read_complete(rt->rtsp_hd, content, content_length);
         content[content_length] = '\0';
     }