Tebas: “The new UEFA rule will allow there to be no sponsorships or bloated transfers”

Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, declared this Wednesday that the UEFA’s “new sustainability standard” will allow “no financially bloated sponsorships or transfers” like that of Manchester City and Etihad, which is “considerably above the market price”. UEFA has unanimously agreed to reform the ‘Financial Fair Play’ rule with the aim of guaranteeing financial sustainability and improving responsibility in European football through solvency, stability and cost control requirements.

“The rule will be approved by the UEFA Executive Committee on April 7. The rule of ‘sustainability’ of football will be similar to that of some countries like Spain and that will allow there to be no financially bloated sponsorships or transfers and that there is a reasonable annual loss limit of 20 million euros with a maximum of three seasons,” said Tebas, who attended the EFE Sport Business Days Forum held in Madrid. “All of this already tells you that there are not going to be unlimited losses or sponsorships like that of Manchester City and Etihad considerably above the market price.. It is a very important advance”, he confessed.

Tebas also spoke about Barcelona’s supposed approach to a possible agreement with the CVC capital fund. “I am not in that negotiation and, therefore, I cannot speak anything. Hopefully it’s true and Barcelona sign the agreement. If at the time they did not see it and now it will be because they consider it positive. For football in general, it is an accelerator project for projects that would never have been done or would have taken a long time to do,” he said.

One of the news of the week has been the agreement between Telefónica (Movistar Plus+) and the British sports platform Dazn to broadcast 100% of LaLiga matches for the next five seasons (2022/2027) for 1,400 million euros. Through this agreement, estimated at 280 million per season, Dazn will make available to Movistar Plus+ customers the package it purchased last December when the rights to LaLiga football were awarded both through its application and its linear channels.

“The objective of distributing football more has been fulfilled and it will reach more people, with a greater price difference. With an important sports offer, the emergence of Dazn and yesterday’s agreements represent a before and after in the form of what we have understood from the visualization of La Liga and professional football in the last fifteen years. It is a very important step for the development of Spanish football”, he pointed out.

Finally, Tebas spoke about the possibility that in the future, from 2024, the Champions League could be held with two invited teams that, due to their continental ranking, they would not have qualified for sporting reasons and earn the place by history. “We will have to see all the conditions because they are not so simple. Not only your UEFA ranking but we will have to ask how it is calculated, because it is not something that was born from heaven and created by God. It is not clear how many years he will be or if it is limited to you being sixth… It has to be approved by the UEFA Committee. I am not in favor of the coefficients but it is not a competition that we organize”he concluded.