Spanish soccer war begins

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Audiovisual football rights are back in fashion in Spain. Swords are up between two big producers Mediapro (laSexta) and Sogecable (Canal+, Digital+ and Cuatro) over who owns what rights.

Late last week, Mediapro officially announced it had reached an agreement with 39 professional football teams for the exploitation of their audiovisual rights from the season 2009-2010.

Mediapro already had the rights of 12 of the most important Spanish teams, among them Real Madrid and Barcelona F.C. In order to get a monopoly the producer still has to sign agreements with Atlético de Madrid, Getafe and Betis. "Were are working on it," Mediapro's general manager Jaume Roures said.

Mediapro's intention is to exploit these rights so the public can watch a match on internet, mobile phones or even on HD movie screens, Roures added.

Following Roures’ declarations, the next day Audiovisual Sport-AVS (the company owned jointly by Sogecable and Mediapro) launched a press release in which it was claimed Mediapro's statements were "false and had bad intentions".

AVS said that in July 2006, the company signed an agreement with Mediapro, Televisión de Catalunya (TVC) and Sogecable to guarantee and exploit the audiovisual rights of football matches for the Spanish League and the King’s Cup for the seasons 2006-7 to 2008-9.

"AVS has exploited and will carry on exploiting these rights by commercialising them to third parties," the note said. It added that AVS has the first and second division football rights for the seasons 2006-7 to 2008-9 and has numerous rights for the seasons to 2012-13. So Mediapro, AVS claims, is not allowed to negotiate contracts with teams.

Nevertheless in spite of this illegal situation according to Audiovisual Sport, it has allowed the "pacific development of the exploitation of these rights taking account the wishes of the public.

"When this season ends and taking into account Mediapro's illegal behaviour because among other things it hasn't paid what it has to pay in our contract, we will sue Mediapro's management and will demand Mediapro pay the money it owes us," AVS said.

Sogecable followed suit by releasing a similar statement. "Sogecable won't allow Mediapro not to abide by the agreements it signed from the season 2006-7 on. We have analysed Jaume Roure's declarations and we have determined they are absolutely illegal," said Sogecable on Friday.

Mediapro answered Audiovisual Sport and Sogecable's declarations of intentions by saying on Friday afternoon that "the contract signed in October 2006 was not legal because Sogecable had not the authorization to sign it. So neither Sogecable nor Audiovisual Sport could run with the exploitation of the football rights. We asked Sogecable to change the terms of the contract but they didn't pay attention to this proposal," said Mediapro in its defense.

The company added that Sogecable owes Mediapro "an amount of money and not us to them". Mediapro also said the July 2006 contract didn't ban Mediapro from buying football rights. "And the Spanish Government banned AVS and Sogecable from signing contracts for a period of over three years when Sogecable and AVS say they own contracts until 2012-13", added Mediapro.

Further, Mediapro also said it was offering Sogecable and AVS a new negotiation but abandoned that on July 4, 2007 as "neither parties wanted to hear us,” says Mediapro's note.

The war has just begun...

Source: Rapid TV News