Spanish league chief targets collective rights sales within three years

Francisco Roca, the chief executive of the Liga de Fútbol Profesional, the Spanish football league, has said that he hopes the domestic game will adopt a collective media rights model within the next three years.

“Over the next two to three years we hope to complete the switch to the collective model,” Roca said. “It’s certainly a concern that two or three clubs dominate and this is a situation that Barcelona and Real Madrid acknowledge, but first we have to solve the distribution system.”

In Spain, rights are sold on a club-by-club basis, leading to the two biggest clubs, Barcelona and Real Madrid, attracting much larger media rights revenues than the other clubs.

Roca said that seven out of the 42 clubs across the top two divisions – La Liga and the Segunda Division – have not agreed to the plans yet for a more equal distribution of media rights revenues.

“Barcelona and Real Madrid have agreed to lower their take [of the total media rights revenues] to 34 per cent from 42 per cent. Over the next year we hope to get all teams on board,” he added.