Spain’s centre-right People’s Party said it will push Real Madrid and Barcelona to have more equitable distribution of income from television rights, according to PP policymaker Miriam Blasco.
“You have to support the small teams as well, because it’s true that the Spanish league would not exist if it was not working for all the clubs,” Blasco, a candidate to become Spain’s top sports official after the election, said in an interview. “It’s also true that Real Madrid and Barcelona sell much more than any other club so I agree that they should get the biggest share,” added the 47-year-old, who is standing for the lower house in the city of Alicante. But I believe that the other clubs should get what they deserve because their current revenues are much smaller.”
What Blasco and the PP says carries some weight as polls suggest that they will win the upcoming Spanish election. .
Under the current system, Real and Barca, the world’s richest clubs by revenue, negotiate their own deals with media firms and between them take half the annual pot of around 600 million euros. Barca earned almost 180 million euros from TV contracts in the 2009/10 season, including non-Spanish deals, with Real reaping just under 160 million, according to the latest Deloitte Football Money League published in February.
It will be interesting to see how Barcelona and Real Madrid react to this. Barca president Sandro Rosell said Tuesday that they were prepared to accept limited revenue sharing but would not agree to a reduction in their income from TV rights.
“We will never reduce in absolute terms our (TV) income, but in a relative sense yes it will be reduced,” Rosell told the Aspire4Sport conference. “It has to happen step by step, little by little because we have to fulfill our budget.”
I wonder of Rosell will change his tune when he is talking to Spain’s top sports official?
