The Liga de Fútbol Profesional, the Spanish football league, is in talks with the country’s government to change legislation that allows broadcasters to show goals from the league for free.
The league’s president, Javier Tebas, told the Bloomberg news agency that charging companies to show the goals could raise as much as €40m ($54.8m) per year.
Commercial broadcasters Mediaset and Atresmedia are among the companies that show such highlights. New TV rights legislation is scheduled to be approved this year and take effect in 2015, a government official, who didn’t confirm the change, said by phone.
Last week, Tebas said that the league had proposed to the government that Real Madrid and Barcelona, the country’s two biggest clubs, should have their media rights income capped at four times as much as the Spanish top-tier Liga’s smallest club. Real and Barcelona currently earn about six-and-a-half times as much as the smallest of the Liga’s 20 clubs.
The new legislation governing the league’s media rights sales is expected to be introduced in 2015.