The first Spanish LaLiga football match of the season between Barcelona and Real Madrid has been scheduled to go head-to-head with Saturday afternoon games in the English Premier League in an effort to secure larger audiences in the Far East and North America.
The game will kick off at 4.15pm local time in Spain on December 3.
The scheduling means that the contest will not be available to watch in the UK, where there is a ban on live football matches being shown during the domestic season between 3pm and 5.15pm in order to protect attendance figures.
The game, known as ‘El Clasico’, will compete for the attentions of viewers around the world with matches featuring Arsenal, Chelsea, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United, which will all kick off at 3pm UK time – 15 minutes before the start of Barcelona v Real.
“We had three windows we had considered, at 1pm, 4.15pm and 6.30pm,” LaLiga president Javier Tebas said. “We analysed those with our audiovisual team and to play at 6pm is too late in Asia while to play at 1pm is too early for the American market.”
He added: “I look at other [foreign] leagues when setting the timetable. The timetable is a strategy we have been working on in recent years and the results are there. Our international sales have tripled because of that and the quality of the players we have in our league. We are continuously looking at ways that we can improve our product. For example, we have installed aerial cameras in seven venues and by the end of the season, we will have that in three more stadiums.”