In a move that is expected to bring huge boost to Spanish football and its clubs, Spanish Football League (including La Liga & Copa Del Rey) last Friday (July 10th 2015) sold its domestic broadcasting rights for season 2015-16 to Telecommunications giants Telefonica for 600 million Euros that is approximately $670 million.
Telefonica is one of the largest fixed-line and mobile telecommunication company in Spain has in this manner taken over the biggest Pay-TV Company with this move and thus now holds the rights to cover and broadcast TV and Audio coverage of all the domestic Football matches in Spain, that is La Liga, Second Division Soccer Leagues and Copa del Rey matches.
What’s more, with this move now they also hold the rights to broadcast all La Liga matches, including that of FC Barcelona and Real Madrid CF, who together have won a total of four out of the ten UEFA Champions League Cup in the past decade.
Messi and Neymar fellow FC Barcelona teammates
The Spanish clubs also have world known players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Neymar etc. playing for them and thus many argue that Spain’s La Liga is the world’s most exciting soccer league and thus broadcasting Spanish football on Paid TV would be a very dominant market.
Only about one third of Spain pays for Paid TV and that too at far below rates that in the UK and France. They also get most of their channels for free and has thus has a huge Paid TV market untapped in the country.
Till recently even Spain’s top two football leagues that is; La Liga and Copa Del Rey, were free to air and now by putting them up as part of the Paid TV, will push the paid-television market in League’s home country as and thus boost the market as well.
On the international front a deal has yet to be announced, but the move is expected to be announced soon and many believe that broadcasting’s international rights will be marketed by Mediapro, a Spanish media group.
Liga BBVA president Mr Tebas
Though Telefónica will only pay €600m for the 2015/2016 football season, which is marginally higher than the €588m that the league paid last year. On the international front, selling the League’s broadcasting rights is expected to be huge as Paid TV is viewership in rest of Europe is huge and last season the League was only €200m.
The move according to Liga BBVA president Mr Tebas, will boost Spanish clubs’ overall revenues as collective deals are standard in most top European leagues and with the right international broadcasting deal he hoped in stabilizing and lessening the financial divide between Spain top two clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, and the rest of the league. Real Madrid CF according to some survey is the richest club in the world, with fellow Spanish team FC Barcelona occupying fourth place on that last.
Though in Terms of TV revenues Spain would be far away from its English counterpart the English Premier League (EPL); who just auctioned off their domestic television rights for astounding £5bn for three seasons beginning in 2016 and is expected to earn a further £3bn globally in international rights, in the long run Spain and Spanish Football is expected to benefit a lot from its current broadcasting deal.
