Cynics quip that football, not religion, is the opium of the masses in Spain - but passions were stirred as much by events off the pitch as on it as executives from two of the country’s biggest media companies fought a bitter war over television rights to broadcast the game.
Now a truce has been declared in the so-called “football war” after Mediapro and Promotora de Informaciones (Prisa) signed a deal that should calm hostilities for the next three seasons. Both parties signed an agreement to show Barcelona and Real Madrid, the country’s two giant clubs and by far the most popular with viewers, along with the rest of the league action on Prisa’s Digital+ channel for the next three seasons.
The channel will broadcast all league games and the King’s Cup, the Spanish domestic cup competition, from next season to 2011-12 on a non-exclusive basis. The deal also includes exclusive rights to a Sunday night game, to be aired by the Digital+ Canal Plus premium pay-TV service. In a statement, Prisa said: “The agreement ends the so-called soccer war.”
The deal came after Mediapro had signed a deal for an undisclosed sum to sell television rights to Prisa as a precursor to a merger between the two groups. But the agreement also allows Mediapro, the Barcelona-based multimedia group, to sell the rights to remaining games to other television stations and other telecommunications operators.
The truce ends two years of court battles over the rights to show big games. Outside the court, Mediapro, which owns the daily Público, and Prisa, which owns the daily El País, traded insults in their newspapers. The legal battles sometimes meant that frustrated Spanish football fans did not get to see their teams play for legal reasons.
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The peace deal has been forced on both groups because the Spanish television industry is being hit by dwindling advertising revenues and growing competition from digital terrestrial channels. Jaume Roures, Mediapro’s chairman, said that talks with Prisa were under way to merge television assets. Prisa and Imagina, a Mediapro holding with Globomedia, a Spanish production company, are likely to pool television and film rights.
Prisa’s Cuatro and laSexta, which is owned by Mediapro and Televisa, of Mexico, have audience shares of 9 and 6 per cent, respectively. The bigger stations command about 15 per cent of the audience each. Cuatro is €5 billion (£4.3 million) in debt, while LaSexta has delayed estimates of when it might make a profit. Analysts said that the deal would save Prisa’s Digital+, which depends on football.