"The deals with Mediapro are positive for developing audiovisually and in of professional footballing terms"

Javier Tebas, who opened the conference floor for Jaume Roures’s speech entitled "Innovation, internationalisation and values, keys to Mediapro’s leadership", began by pointing out that "introducing you to Jaume Roures is introducing you to someone with strong ties to professional football and audiovisual rights". "The relationship between La Liga and Mediapro was not good to start with"

Javier Tebas, who was responsible for introducing the conference focused on “innovation, internationalisation and key values of Mediapro’s leadership”, given by Jaume Roures, and started his intervention by saying “to present Jaume Roures is to present a person who is linked to professional football and audiovisual rights”. “Relations between La Liga and Mediapro were not good at the start,” said Tebas, who remembered the four footballing wars in the years 1997, 2003, 2007 and 2012. “After, we came to positive agreements in order to develop broadcasting and professional football”, said the La Liga president.

Tebas said that “La Liga has positioned itself at a Premium level in international football and that has been contributed to by Mediapro, like the dissection of kick off times”. With regards to this, the La Liga president informed that the game between Real Madrid and Granada, played on 5 April at midday was the most viewed game ever of football in China, with an audience of more than 26 million people. This has favoured the international exposition of the LFP given that “seven Liga BBVA clubs have Asian sponsors, something which no other league has,” explained Tebas.

Meanwhile, Jaume Roures mentioned the denominate Economic Interests Group, an alliance between Mediapro and La Liga, for the use of the Mediacoach tool on behalf of the clubs and the exploitation of advertising of UTV (the perimeter of digital advertising in the stadiums), amongst others, and that this has meant €14 million more coming into Spanish football.

In another part of his discourse, Roures referred to the fight against piracy, in which La Liga and several other institutions are involved, and the harm that this causes to football. “It is a massive destructive arm against all of us and both in the short and medium term it will be an incontrollable problem”. In this sense, Jaume Roures took advantage of the chance at the New Communication Forum to emphasise that “in Spain and other countries, policy measures in the audiovisual market have more to do with politics than the industry”.

Finally, both participants at the informative breakfast of the New Communication Forum showed their desire to continue collaborating in a way that allowed La Liga to continue with its brand, and Mediapro with its activities.