LaLiga, the governing body of Spanish football’s top two divisions, has launched its invitation to tender covering broadcast rights in 16 European territories.
The ITT covers the exclusive rights to the top-tier LaLiga Santander and second-tier LaLiga Smartbank leagues between 2021-22 and 2023-24. A bid deadline of midday (CET) on March 19 has been set.
The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) are included within the 16 territories in which the rights are being offered. The rights are also on the market in: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
All matches from the top-tier and second-tier are included in the inventory as well as all play-off matches for promotion to the top tier.
The rights on offer do not include the rights for betting streaming, radio transmissions, commercial uses of statistics and graphics, and broadcast in public places.
LaLiga is working with the Barcelona-headquartered Mediapro agency during the tender process.
Successful bidders will be required to broadcast a minimum of three live matches per first division match week and weekly broadcasts of LaLiga’s highlights and magazine shows.
LaLiga also requires that a minimum of one second-division match be broadcast per matchweek as well as its equivalent highlights show.
LaLiga has been steadily increasing revenues over recent cycles which has yielded enormous returns for its clubs, most recently seeing a total of €1.42bn ($1.53bn) in domestic and international revenues for its 20 participant clubs in the 2018-19 season.
The IMG agency acquired the rights for the current 2018-21 cycle across 12 territories included in the ITT before agreeing to sublicense agreements with regional and domestic broadcasters across them. The now-defunct MP & Silva acquired the rights across the remaining four territories before its contract was terminated in light of financial difficulties at the agency.
IMG and the Turkish-based Saran agency then acquired MP & Silva’s rights before dividing the four territories equally between them.
Current LaLiga broadcasters across the 16 territories covered by the ITT include: Stöõ 2 Sport (Iceland), Bulsatcom, Vivacom and Max Sport (Bulgaria), C More (Sweden), C More Sport (Finland), Digi Sport (Czech Republic and Slovakia), SportKlub (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia,), TV2 (Denmark), TV2 and Strive (Norway), Spiler2 TV (Hungary) and Eleven Sports (Portugal).