Spanish soccer confident for upcoming TV rights auction

MADRID: Spain's La Liga on Monday played down concerns about possible low bidding prices in the upcoming auction of broadcasting rights for domestic league matches between 2019 and 2022.

"There is still a lot of time until the auction. If no-one bids, it won't matter," La Liga president Javier Tebas told a roundtable discussion in Madrid.

"It might actually even be a good thing," because it could accelerate the model already being increasingly adopted by other championships to market the rights themselves, he argued.

Tebas reaffirmed his aim of securing 1.3 billion euros annually for the domestic rights to the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons, compared with 1.1 billion euros under the current contract.

In November, Tebas had said that La Liga also hopes to secure a further 1.0 billion euros for the international broadcasting rights, bringing the total amount per season to 2.3 billion euros.

The president said he was unfazed by suggestions from one of Telefonica's top executives recently that the Spanish telecoms giant might not be in the running for next season's broadcasting rights

"If they feel that it is too expensive, then they won't buy," Tebas said.

"We'll get as much money as before, or even more. We'll take the risk."