May 28 – The Spanish football federation (RFEF) has given the green light for matches to be played on Mondays and Fridays when La Liga returns in order to allow the season to finish.
The RFEF will also allow games to take place on the same days at the start of the 2020-21 season but will thereafter decide whether the same fixture scheduling can continue when football in Spain returns to normality.
“As a clear demonstration of the RFEF’s goodwill, the RFEF wants to help allow the current season to finish without any problems,” an RFEF statement read.
“As such, the RFEF is allowing LaLiga to play matches on Fridays and Mondays from the resumption of this season’s competition until the end of this season.”
The announcement came despite the country’s commercial courts ruling in favour of RFEF in its long-running legal battle with La Liga over who had jurisdiction over Monday and Friday night matches, the federation previously arguing that the scheduling of games on those days required its approval.
A temporary measure had been put in place this season whereby Friday night matches were allowed, but fixtures on Mondays were not.
The RFEF’s main issue with Friday and Monday fixtures was that they were not fan friendly for broadcasting purposes but that is not currently a factor given that matches will be behind closed doors anyway.
However, it also reminded La Liga any future negotiations must be conducted “in good faith”.
The ability to schedule games across the week is becoming a useful marketing tool for LaLiga as they seek to gain ground on the Premier League’s lead in the broadcast markets. That includes taking the fight to the Premier League in the UK where In partnership with its UK broadcast partner Premier Sports, LaLiga is offering free access to LaLigaTV for all Sky UK customers during the month of June.
With competition planned to resume during the week of June 8, and plans to schedule matches every day (calendars to be confirmed), there are a lot of live games on offer with LaLiga having pretty much a free run at the UK football watching public who have been starved of live action and are unlikely to see their own domestic league back in action until the following month.
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