Spanish football’s LaLiga will resume its 2019-20 season on June 11 and will play matches every day for at least the first week.
The final eleven rounds of the season, for both the top-tier LaLiga and second-tier Segunda División, are to be completed by July 19. The first match in the LaLiga restart will be the derby between Sevilla and Real Betis.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas had mooted the restart last week after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez gave the league the green light to restart. It was confirmed with a statement from the government’s department for sport on Friday, saying that the schedule for the remaining 11 rounds of the season, for LaLiga and the second division, had been agreed with the league and the Spanish football federation.
Tebas told Spanish newspaper Marca at the weekend that LaLiga is aiming to start its 2020-21 season on September 12.
LaLiga is running an initiative entitled Applause to Infinity enabling fans to send recordings of themselves applauding that will be played in stadiums at the 20th minute of every match.
Tebas told Marca that the league is looking to replicate the feature in recent German Bundesliga broadcasts that allows television viewers to choose to watch matches with recorded crowd noise. Television coverage of the German league has offered recorded crowd sounds as an alternative to the real audio from the stadium. As matches are being played behind closed doors, fans are having to adjust to watching football without the roar of the crowd.
The first week’s match schedule features two 1pm Central European Time kick-offs, which are favourable for Asian television audiences. LaLiga has been providing its international broadcasters with a range of alternative content during the absence of live matches.
Elsewhere in Europe’s big five leagues, the English Premier League is to resume on June 17 and Italy’s Serie A is to do so on June 20. France’s Ligue 1 abandoned its 2019-20 season last month.