Spain

Spanish club Barcelona said this week that the planned return to collective selling would help La Liga to eventually match or exceed the media-rights income of Italy’s Serie A, but that it would require the country’s pay-television industry to be much stronger.

Mike Kiernan, analyst for SportBusiness Intelligence, looks at television audiences for Super Bowl XLIX

The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) has tabled a proposal to the Spanish Football League (LFP) form a joint commission in order to negotiate the collective sale of rights to the Liga, the sport’s top division in the country.

Telefónica will bid for the collective rights to the Liga, the top division of Spanish football, when a collective model is introduced, according to the telecommunications company’s chief executive, José María Álvarez Pallete.

Italian DTT sports broadcaster Sportitalia has acquired rights to the 2015 Copa del Rey de Baloncesto, the annual knockout competition of Spanish club basketball.

Telecommunications company Telefónica has dislodged the Mediapro agency as Barcelona’s official rights-holder for the 2015-16 season, the Spanish Liga club has announced.

Spanish football clubs are prepared to stop playing in order to push through government legislation that will allow media rights for the top-tier Liga to shift to a collective sales model, according to Joan Collet, the president of Espanyol.

The Spanish Football League (LFP) has written to the country’s government to ask for the implementation of legislation that will enable the introduction of a collective media-rights sales model “as soon as possible.”

Mediapro has won an appeal in the Spanish Supreme Court against an earlier ruling that the agency had breached contracts relating to rights for Spanish football’s top-tier Liga.

Spanish Liga football club Athletic Bilbao has confirmed a one-year contract with the Mediapro agency for its broadcast rights in the 2015-16 season.

Spanish public-service broadcaster TVE has acquired rights for the Giro d’Italia and a number of other cycling races.

The Spanish Liga and Segunda Division’s member clubs will meet at a Liga de Fútbol Profesional assembly on Friday in a bid to push through the system under which collective broadcast rights selling will be introduced into domestic football.

Organisers of Baku’s 2015 European Games have secured rights deals in Spain, Portugal, Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia for the inaugural edition of the multi-sport event.

Spanish commercial broadcaster Mediaset was forced to increase its fee to keep the rights for Spanish national team football friendlies in a deal agreed last week following a formal tender ordered by the country’s competition regulator.

Mike Kiernan, analyst for SportBusiness Intelligence, reviews the most-watched events of 2014 in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The European Broadcasting Union consortium of free-to-air broadcasters and pan-European broadcaster Eurosport have extended their rights agreement for the Vuelta a España cycling race under a five-year deal running from 2016 to 2020.