Javier Tebas: "We have the duty to support all of Spanish sport"

The Spanish Sports Association (ADESP) was introduced to the public today, Thursday, at the Club de Campo Villa de Madrid. LaLiga president Javier Tebas and Miguel Cardenal, the president of the High Council for Sport (CSD), were in attendance at the event.

Tebas made the most of the occasion to reiterate LaLiga's commitment to Spanish sport as a whole. In his words, "it is necessary: we have the duty and responsibility to support all of Spanish sport because we represent the same values. We believe that the LaLiga4Sports project is vital so as to promote all the work done by the sports federations. If Spanish sport fares well, so will we." The LaLiga president went on to stress that the football scene's commitment to this cause is "unanimous". On this note, he added that, "All the Liga BBVA and Liga Adelante clubs have agreed to pledge 1% of the TV revenues raised following the Royal Decree [5/2015 on urgent measures regarding the marketing of broadcasting rights for professional football competitions] to ensure that all federation-affiliated sports players' social security is covered, among other needs. This equates to nearly €15 million."

On this note, Cardenal praised LaLiga's commitment to the other federations, stating that by sticking together, Spanish sport can only grow much stronger. He remarked that several opportunities have arisen on this front in recent years and pointed to the creation of ADESP as having signalled a step forward: "Through everyone's hard work we are attracting sponsors and we have proposals on the table that would have been unthinkable previously. And we want society to know about all this work."

The CSD was a driving force behind the establishment of ADESP, whose principal objective is to serve as a nexus for Spanish federated sport following the merger of AFEDES and COFEDE, which previously respectively represented the country's Olympic and non-Olympic federations.

As ADESP president Jose Hidalgo put it, its mission is to "carve out a space for federated sport. We are working on a number of projects with a view to showcasing the magnificent efforts of the federations. On top of that, we are committed to the fight against doping and to preserving the integrity of sport by preventing the fixing of sporting events."

At the end of March, LaLiga launched the website www.laliga4sports.es with the aim of shining a spotlight on the work of Spain's 64 sports federations and the Spanish Paralympic Committee through digital content. In collaboration with the CSD and ADESP, among others, LaLiga4Sports seeks to improve the visibility and coverage of other Spanish sports and their stars, to help the aforementioned federations and committee grow, and to make fans more aware of their successes.