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Multinational broadcasting corporations Turner and Fox have submitted the first formal bid to take over the broadcasting rights for Argentine football from the government, which had been funding free-to-air viewing of domestic football since 2009 through Football For All (Fútbol Para Todos).

The offer of 2.5 billion pesos per year represents an increase of around 50 percent on what the government had been providing in funding or Fútbol Para Todos.

The state’s current contract with the AFA was due to run until 2019 but following a letter signed by representatives of all domestic clubs back in July, a willing Macri administration declared that the government’s participation in football broadcasting would come to an end at the end of this year.

The government-appointed co-ordinator of Futbol Para Todos, Fernando Marín, received the offer from the broadcasting moguls and traveled to the United States to formally discuss the offer face-to-face.

“These businesses will sign the contact with the AFA, who will have the rights for 15 years, and that figure will rise annually,” Pérez declared, in conversation with Telam. Pérez’s apparent conviction that the deal will go through does seem a tad premature given that the clubs, officially the owners of the television rights, still need to give the deal the thumbs up. And given that the figure of 2.5 billion pesos is exactly the same as the government’s rejected offer back in July, Pérez might be getting a bit ahead of himself.

So what does the deal entail? And crucially, would it be the end of free televised football? Yes and no. If the deal goes through, football would nonetheless remain free for 2017. But from the start of 2018, we’d wave goodbye to nine years of watching our favorite sport for free and return to the pay-per-view system.

We can expect this to be the first of many significant changes in the world of Argentine football, with AFA elections likely to take place early next year and the door for the Super League and the privatization of football clubs appearing to open wider and wider every day.