MADRID, 2 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Liga F, Beatriz Álvarez, hoped on Monday to “close the title sponsorship” of the competition this year, since “there are many interested companies” with whom they are “negotiating”, while also highlighting the “emerging moment” of Spanish women’s football, although “there are many things” on which they must “work”.
“We have more and more sponsors, but we don’t have a title sponsor yet, so hopefully we can close it this year. I can’t name any companies that are being talked about. There are several that are interested and we are negotiating with them, it’s not yet time to announce it,” said Álvarez in statements to the media after the Liga F gala in Madrid.
In this way, the leader hopes to forget the unsuccessful relationship with Finetwork, which stopped being the main sponsor of the F League before the end of the 2022-2023 season, and since then the competition has not had that ‘title sponsor’ that gives identity and name to the product.
This is one of the “new challenges” for the Liga F starting this season, such as “trying to improve the infrastructure, which is important”, so that “there are more stadiums opening” and thus be able to “improve audiences”. “If they don’t improve, the sponsors will pull the plug on the product and, in short, they will have to fire them,” he warned.
“You manage to give an image of the audiovisual product of much higher quality, which increases the audience and also increases the interest of the spectator in going to the stadium. We are working on improving the spectator’s experience, we have a lot of room for improvement and, of course, I think that this year there will be a significant leap forward,” he added.
Thus, Álvarez does not know if the 2024-2025 campaign “is the year of consolidation”, although he did remember that “it has not been easy to get to the point of having a professional league”. “That can mark a before and after, and we still need to make many changes, there are many things we have to work on, but we are in an early stage, what we have to do is continue taking steps, try to prioritize the small issues that are most necessary right now in order to grow,” he analyzed.
And the relationship with the players is also relevant to this. “Criticism, especially when it comes from the protagonists of this story, I think is constructive and always contributes. In fact, criticism from their own voice makes us try to change and modify things, to analyse the situation. From now on, I hope they have the voice to make this go in the direction they want,” she said.
“The issue of the calendar is a matter of consensus. The proposal also attempted to bring positions within the federation closer together and there were a couple of things in which the federation wanted other interests than the clubs. In the end, it was decided in favour of the clubs’ request, which gave us a sense of purpose. The fact that the clubs and the players feel very good about the dates is the most important thing and the first thing that the calendar has to offer,” he said.
He also stressed that the relationship with the Royal Spanish Football Federation “is calmer.” “We have reached an agreement and coordination to accept the bases that allow us to have a legal framework, at least to concentrate on the work, not to be with those political stones of competences that we had before, and that has already marked a before and after. From there, everything that will happen, for me is just as uncertain as for you,” he said.
“We have had several meetings, we have been talking with the unions, we have been making progress on various issues, both social and economic, and they are all already present, they are agreed, the final text is agreed, we just need to get the players and the referees to approve it so we can sign it,” he concluded about the collective agreement.