Barcelona join Real Madrid in criticism of La Liga’s deal with CVC

Real Madrid have released a club statement on Thursday evening to respond to the news of a deal brokered between La Liga and American fund CVC that will see the latter invest €2.7bn in the former in exchange for a 10% stake.

They revealed that the agreement was closed without the participation or knowledge of the club, and La Liga just today allowed Madrid access to the terms of the agreement. It alleges that the agreement would take 10.95% of the audiovisual rights negotiated by the clubs over the next 50 years, and labelled the CVC an opportunist fund that unsuccessfully tried similar deals with both Serie A and the Bundesliga.

Madrid said that they cannot support an operation that gives investors the keys to the future of the 42 clubs that populate the top two tiers of Spanish football for the next 50 years, and made clear they would be convening an assembly to discuss the agreement that they labelled unprecedented and disruptive.

Barcelona joined Madrid a couple of hours later, releasing a club statement of their own after the small matter of announcing that Lionel Messi had left the club. They posited that the operation wasn’t sufficiently discussed with the clubs, or the owners of the audiovisual rights as they referred to them. They claim the audiovisual rights for the next 50 years would be affected.

Barcelona claimed that the idea of signing a half-century long contract is inappropriate given the uncertainties inseparable from the world of football, and expressed surprise that the whole process wasn’t conducted with more transparency where competitors could be the analysed.