Barça and Real Madrid will consider TV rights share, says Spanish Minister

By David Gold

May 31 – Spanish Sports Minister José Ignacio Wert has said that Barcelona and Real Madrid are open to agreeing a more balanced television rights agreement with fellow La Liga teams.

The big two’s huge presence in the television rights market has angered many of their rivals, who are fighting for a collective deal similar to those in other major leagues in Europe.

Barcelona and Real Madrid’s dominance of the Spanish game has been entrenched in recent years by the fact that, as they negotiate television rights individually, they take a massive proportion of revenues.

They take approximately double that made each season from television by English Premier League champions, €120 million (£105 million/$162 million).

A provisional agreement was reached last season which would mean a collective deal could be signed.

However, the big two, even with a reduced overall share of the television revenue – with the figure dropping from 45 per cent to closer to 34 per cent – would still dominate financially.

Valencia and Atlético Madrid would then take the next biggest shares, with the other 16 teams dividing the rest equitably.

Leading teams such as Sevilla and Villarreal have been outraged by this disparity in wealth and have been fighting for a more balanced deal.

Their battle suffered a significant blow though earlier this month when Villarreal, just a season after qualifying for the Champions League, were relegated from La Liga.

“I believe that Madrid and Barcelona are receptive and are ready to be more flexible in the sharing out of [income from] rights,” Wert told the AS sports daily.

“If television stops paying huge quantities for football rights the situation will be complicated,” he added in a stark warning about the huge debts Spanish clubs have – estimated at €3.5 billion (£3.1 billion/$5.1 billion) last year.

To underline the lack of competitiveness in the Spanish league, Valencia finished third this season, but were closer in points terms to relegation than the title.

The Villarreal President Fernando Roig (pictured above) has previously warned that “either this changes or we kill Spanish football” and has said something must be done within three or four years.

José María del Nido, the Sevilla President, has also labelled the league “the biggest pile of junk in Europe”.

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