Alex Trelinski
PRIVATE equity firm CVC has agreed a big €2.7 billion deal ‘in principle’ with La Liga which will see the investors get 10% of league revenues.
CVC Capital Partners is based in Luxembourg and unsuccessfully tried to buy into Italian football last year.
In March, CVC bought a 14.3% stake in the Six Nations rugby union tournament, and it used to own Formula 1 racing.
La Liga said today(August 4) that it had agreed in principle a ‘multi-pronged’ deal with CVC.
Besides the big cash injection and revenue stream, a new La Liga commercial division would be set up, with CVC taking a 10% holding.
In a statement, La Liga said: “The deal values La Liga at around €24.2 billion and if approved, would pay for ‘structural improvements’ as well as offsetting some of the immediate impact of COVID-19.”
La Liga suffered major financial problems as the pandemic put paid to ticket sales.
The big ‘three’ of Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atletico Madrid looked elsewhere for money earlier this year as they signed up for the quickly-abandoned European Super League.
The deal still has to be ratified by La Liga’s executive committee and the clubs.
The league claimed that 90% of the CVC investment would go directly to the clubs but crucially admitted that the amounts distributed would be based on average ‘audiovisual revenues over the last seven years’.
In other words, its almost certain that the biggest clubs will get the largest share of the new financial cake.
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