While most of the Spanish sports media concentrated on the double transfers of Kaká and Ronaldo to Real Madrid, another important football-related event occurred last week in the Spanish capital. After three years of court cases, confusion and chaos the broadcast rights to La Liga and the Copa del Rey (the Spanish FA Cup) were finally settled.
While most of the Spanish sports media concentrated on the double transfers of Kaká and Ronaldo to Real Madrid, another important football-related event occurred last week in the Spanish capital. After three years of court cases, confusion and chaos the broadcast rights to La Liga and the Copa del Rey (the Spanish FA Cup) were finally settled. From next season and lasting until season 2011/12, following an accord between Sogecable and Mediapro, all matches will be shown on Digital + except for the final of the Cup which is considered an event of national importance and will therefore be shown on terrestrial free-to-air. The agreement means Digital+ get the Sunday night match exclusively with the rest of the games shown on a non-exclusive basis – two games a week on pay TV and the rest most likely to be shown on a pay-per-view basis.
The dispute had started in 2006 when an agreement was drawn up between Sogecable and Mediapro which meant any future rights acquired by Mediapro had to be transferred to AVS (owned by Sogecable), while it had to pay for transmitting AVS games and not show any others. By 2007/08 Sogecable was insisting that Mediapro held to the 2006 agreement, while Mediapro on the other hand believed that the agreement was void. From 2007, Mediapro had been steadily acquiring individual broadcast rights from football clubs, reaching agreements with all of Spain’s leading football teams, including Barcelona and Real Madrid, for five years starting season 2009/10 (the Real Madrid deal alone was worth €1.1bn and that with Barca €1.0bn). To the anger of Sogecable, Mediapro had been showing some first division matches live through its free-to-air La Sexta channel while AVS had been transmitting the same matches through its pay-per-view channel Digital+.
Confused? So was the judge presiding over the dispute. It was he who had originally ruled that he did not want to prohibit games being transmitted that could be contrary to the legal obligation to transmit free-to-air games of “national general interest” and it was this ruling that had allowed the dispute to fester. Not only that, but although the broadcast schedule has been settled the case for Sogecable’s compensation is still continuing.