Tebas vs Perez and the ‘Sports Law’ talks that cast Super League shadow over Spanish football

“We are just about happy with how it has all gone down,” Javier Tebas told reporters at a news conference at La Liga’s Madrid headquarters on Thursday afternoon.
“We did not want to boost the Super League,” said the president of La Liga. “They (the politicians) don’t see the importance of this issue. The Real Madrid president (Florentino Perez) has a huge importance in this country. Twenty-six of the 27 EU countries have said they support the current model over the Super League. But we have many mechanisms to fight it, and we will do so.”
Advertisement
Tebas was speaking after a meeting of all 42 Primera and Segunda Division clubs, which was called to react to the Spanish parliament agreeing a new ‘Sports Law’ that will govern the country’s football industry going forward.
The final wording for this legislation was thrashed out at a meeting of the Spanish parliament’s culture and sports committee on Tuesday, after months of intense lobbying in public and private between two camps spearheaded by La Liga chief Tebas and his Real Madrid counterpart Perez.
As well as their differences over the Super League and whether clubs joining it should be ejected from Spain’s domestic league, the two sides were also split over if La Liga had the right to agree commercial deals collectively for all clubs, and if the Spanish federation should have the right to intervene in the league’s business.
The 39 (of 42) Primera and Segunda Division clubs backing Tebas (Athletic Bilbao stayed out of the fight as they have not gone into the ‘La Liga Boost’ partnership with US investors CVC) thought the issues so serious that they publicly considered shutting down a round of La Liga games if the politicians did not yield to their demands for last-minute changes to the legislation.
Tuesday’s three-hour debate was broadcast over YouTube and included speeches from politicians on all sides, including representatives of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and Unidos Podemos from the ruling coalition, and the main opposition Partido Popular (PP).
Voting on the suggestions was held up by more frantic behind-the-scenes negotiating, including a crucial last-minute phone call between Tebas and Miquel Iceta, Spain’s minister of culture and sport.
Eventually, a dozen votes were placed with a show of hands. In the end, the politicians did what they tend to do — they tried to keep everyone as happy as possible.
Advertisement
The deal agreed between Tebas and Iceta meant the strike was averted, but nobody was fully content with the new legal rules that will govern Spain’s football industry for the considerable future, and future battles seem inevitable…
A fear that the new ‘Sports Law’ was going to heavily favour the interests of Madrid and Barcelona had led to a concerted campaign of action by La Liga and many club presidents and executives.
On Monday October 17, all 14 members of La Liga’s Comision Delegada — consisting of presidents and chief executives of Primera and Segunda clubs, along with Tebas — met with Iceta and the CSD (sports council) president Jose Manuel Franco.
La Liga president Tebas (Photo: Irina R. H. / AFP7 / Europa Press Sports via Getty Images)
During that meeting, the politicians heard the clubs’ concerns that the proposed law seriously endangered the current structure and sustainability of Spanish football.
La Liga showed the government a report — which The Athletic has seen — that claimed that the new law as drafted could negatively impact Spanish football in future to a total of €9.1billion (£7.8bn, $9.1bn) over the next 10 years.
If La Liga no longer had the legal right to negotiate collective deals with sponsors and industry partners, a club like Madrid or Barca could veto the use of images of Karim Benzema or Robert Lewandowski in their promotional material, or centrally organised Clasico promotional events in the US or China.
La Liga warned that this could lead to a loss of €2.6billion in sponsorship income, €3.5billion in TV rights, and €2.7billion income from its La Liga tech arm over the next decade. It also argued that legal uncertainty caused by the new law could put at risk up to €2billion due to La Liga and its clubs through its deal with US investors CVC.
This looks very much a worst-case scenario, and the new law cannot stop La Liga negotiating TV rights collectively, as that is protected under a Royal Decree from 2015.
Advertisement
The larger general issue was that the business model constructed over the last decade, which has helped make La Liga more structurally and financially stable, would be endangered.
Tebas was elected La Liga president in 2013 with the backing of the ‘G-30’ group of smaller Primera and Segunda clubs who felt pushed around by the big two. His signature change was a more equal distribution of TV revenue, more of which had previously gone to Madrid and Barcelona.
This allowed smaller clubs to pay off historic debts and move towards having a much stronger financial position, but the Clasico clubs felt they were no longer being rewarded for all the interest they generated. This is also directly connected to the salary-limit rules that Tebas introduced, and which Barcelona president Joan Laporta criticised so much last summer.
Barcelona president Laporta and striker Robert Lewandowski (Photo: Eric Espada/Getty Images)
So through recent years, La Liga and its two biggest member clubs have been involved in regular rows — in the media and in court. This continued up through Madrid and Barcelona pushing the aborted European Super League launch in April 2021, and the ‘La Liga Boost’ partnership announced later last year with CVC.
The fear around La Liga is that the new ‘Sports Law’ could now pull apart the ‘structure’ which has been built under Tebas over the last decade, owing partly to Perez’s considerable political power. In recent weeks, Barcelona club figures also met privately with politicians putting together the text of the legislation. The Catalan club are currently looking for any ways possible to improve their financial position, hence their continuing alliance with Perez for the Super League and against Tebas’ centralising revenues in La Liga.
Another sticking point for La Liga and the clubs in the ‘Sports Law’ draft was an article that gave the Spanish federation more power to interfere in La Liga’s business. Given the awful relationship between Tebas and his Royal Spanish Football Federation counterpart Luis Rubiales, this would be a recipe for future deadlock in Spanish football.
La Liga claimed it was worried the federation could follow pressure from UEFA or FIFA to unilaterally reduce the number of clubs in Primera from 20 to a lower figure, such as 16, The Athletic was told. So it wanted the new law to give it a say before the federation could make any rule changes which affect the clubs or La Liga institutionally.
Tebas and the 39 clubs made a big show of unity. A parade of club presidents spoke to different Spanish media outlets outlining their issues with the different drafts of the legislations, and highlighting the problems that their clubs could suffer if the law did not include their suggested amendments.
“Our position is the same as all 39 clubs,” Sevilla president Jose Castro told Movistar TV. “We support a law which does not cause problems for creating new business. We have one of the strongest leagues in Europe, and we cannot put hurdles to its growth. There are concrete phrases in there which need to change so that the clubs can all have the same opportunities. Above all the meritocracy which has allowed us to get results, in Spain and in Europe.”
Sevilla president Jose Castro (Photo: David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)
There was also a well-orchestrated PR campaign to let fans and citizens know that something important was happening. The message “Ley del Deporte para todos” (A ‘Sports Law’ for all) was placed on TV screens during most La Liga games at the weekend, next to the scoreline in a space that had been occupied by messages in support of Ukraine and against racism in recent weeks.
The aim was to sway public opinion in their favour and to help convince the politicians before Tuesday’s crucial vote. The seed was planted that clubs felt so strongly they were willing to shut down all Primera and Segunda games for a full gameweek before the leagues break for the World Cup on November 10.
No club president wanted to actually voice such a threat directly, but when Castro was asked if they would go that far, he did not rule it out. “We are not afraid of making decisions, even if they are not good for anyone. We have to defend the rights of the 39 clubs, the rights of La Liga, and the rights of the fans,” the Sevilla president said.
Hanging over all of this is the Super League project, which Perez and Laporta continue to push for, along with Juventus president Andrea Agnelli.
The only real way that any new ‘Sports Law’ could impact Spanish football’s sustainability and finances as disastrously as La Liga has suggested — those estimated losses of €9billion — would be if it helped facilitate Madrid and Barcelona shifting their main sporting focus to a European Super League.
The ESL project has never been as unpopular in Spain as in other countries. At the time of the attempted launch in April 2021, when most of Europe quickly dismissed the idea including Boris Johnson, the then UK prime minister, the Spanish government hesitated.
Perhaps due to the degree of influence Perez wields among the country’s political and media elites, there was much less condemnation of his ideas, and very little ridicule. Then sports minister Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes initially said he would have to speak to Perez before coming to any conclusions, although he soon fell in line with all the other EU governments when the launch began to flounder.
That consensus led to an article being included in an early draft of the new ‘Sports Law’ that excluded any clubs who joined unauthorised external competitions from taking part in La Liga and the Copa del Rey. This was said to be similar to steps the British government signalled it would take to stop English clubs joining competitions not sanctioned by UEFA or FIFA.
La Liga and the other clubs felt confident they were covered, until last September when it emerged that both political parties, PSOE and Partido Popular, had withdrawn their support for this article. A new draft of the law then contained an article stating, “The granting of a licence (to play in a domestic competition) can never be conditioned by the participation in other competitions or sporting activities.” Exactly the opposite of what the earlier draft had said.
Tebas immediately took to Twitter to object.
Algunos NO saben el daño económico que harán al fútbol nacional, para “beneficiar”a dos.¿por qué solo escuchan y creen al de siempre?Así nos va.
PSOE y PP retiran su ‘amenaza’ al Madrid cuatro días antes del anuncio clave de Florentino sobre la Superliga https://t.co/dSfNBBdU6u — Javier Tebas Medrano (@Tebasjavier) September 29, 2022
“Some people do NOT know the financial damage they will do to our country’s football, to ‘benefit’ just two,” the tweet said. “Why do they just listen and believe the same person as always? That’s how things go. PSOE & PP withdraw their ‘threat’ to Madrid four days before a key announcement by Florentino about the Super League.”
There was no big announcement at Madrid’s AGM, but Perez did repeat his usual arguments in favour of the new competition — that UEFA was a monopoly holding back football, that the bigger clubs should meet more often, that younger fans are bored by the current structures.
Similar happened at Barcelona’s annual assembly in early October. Laporta told socios the European Super League was “the solution that football needs” and a “necessity” for Barca. It was argued that the extra hundreds of millions of euros it would generate would mean the Catalan club no longer had to rely on pulling financial levers to fix its still huge financial issues.
Barcelona’s economic vice-president Eduard Romeu also said at Barca’s assembly that the Super League was a primary reason it had declined to enter La Liga’s CVC deal along with most other Spanish clubs, instead selling a share of the club’s future TV income to US financier Sixth Street (which had also backed the Super League project).
That shadow has hung heavily over the debate about the new ‘Sports Law’ during the past week, with multiple presidents and executives at other clubs mentioning it. “We are all against the Super League, except just a few,” said Sevilla’s Castro, without having to say who those few were.
After all the last-minute lobbying and phone calls, there were mixed levels of satisfaction at the result of Tuesday’s meeting.
Of the three main points La Liga wanted underlined in the new legislation, they got all they wanted in only one — more freedom from intervention by the Spanish federation and its president Rubiales.
They also retained the legal backing to negotiate collective commercial deals, although not exactly as they would have liked. Still, the vast majority of clubs were happy that a threat to their business models from the “big two” was avoided, and La Liga is confident its CVC deal is safe.
However, the Real president Perez will be happy with the wording in the legislation that states clubs will not be automatically ejected from La Liga if they join a Super League. The politicians said they had received legal advice that “we cannot support something that at this moment is subject to a court case”.
(Photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)
This referred to the case currently at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, where the Super League ‘rebels’ allege that UEFA has a monopoly position in European football that cannot be justified. An initial decision from the European judges is expected in December, although the case is likely to drag on considerably longer. So the politicians were able to dodge making any set ruling on the treatment of clubs if they were to join a Super League — which Perez can consider a victory in his continuing efforts to keep the Super League fire burning.
Thursday’s meeting of representatives from Primera and Segunda clubs featured a sharp exchange of views between the Madrid and Barca delegation and the other side, led by Tebas. But there was no will among the 39 clubs to go through with their threat of shutting down a full round of Primera and Segunda fixtures over the Super League issue.
Madrid did not officially react to the committee’s decisions, and Perez has been in hospital this week for a minor operation. Barcelona did release an official statement which did not mention the Super League by name, but claimed a victory as La Liga had been stopped from “appropriating” commercial rights which the clubs will now still be able to exploit individually.
That statement was released just hours before Barcelona exited the Champions League group stages for a second consecutive year. Atletico Madrid and Sevilla also fell at the first hurdle in UEFA’s premier club competition, making it the first time this century that just one team (Madrid) made the knockout stages.
That should bring deep debate and reflection about the current competitive level of La Liga’s best teams. Instead, the biggest powerbrokers in Spanish football have been involved these past few weeks in their usual complex battles for money and power.
The latest Tebas vs Perez face-off has ended in a technical draw, but the politicking and dealmaking is far from over.
(Photo: JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images)