The Spanish football league announced on Wednesday that it has agreed a domestic television deal worth 2.65 billion euros ($2.8 billion) for the next three seasons. Including international rights deals struck in the summer, La Liga's overall television revenue has risen from 800 million euros a season to nearly 1.5 billion euros a season.

A subsidiary of telecommunications giant Telefonica, Movistar, will have first choice of one match from each round of fixtures for 250 million euros a season. Meanwhile, multimedia communications group Mediapro have the rights to eight other La Liga games each weekend. The deal is set to rise with eight other available packages including Copa del Rey games, highlights and one La Liga match per round of fixtures to be shown on free-to-air television still to be agreed.

"It is not the Premier League because we have far to go in working on our brand, but we are at a much superior level than the Italian, German or French leagues and within a billion of the Premier League," league president Javier Tebas told AFP in an exclusive interview recently.

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Better than the Bundesliga

The figures are a little more than the 2.5 billion euros the Bundesliga secured, but both leagues remain well short of the 6.9 billion euros the Premier League secured for its TV deals from 2016 to 2019. However, there is progress being made in La Liga's income, mainly thanks to the introduction of a law in April which forces the clubs to bargain such deals collectively.

Previously, Spanish clubs negotiated their TV deals individually, which allowed Barcelona and Real Madrid to snap up almost 50 percent of the overall pot. The new system sees 10 percent of the revenue raised going to second-division clubs. Of the remaining 90 percent, half is split equally amongst all 20 top-flight clubs. Another quarter is allocated based on league results from the previous five seasons, whilst the final quarter is awarded on a variety of criteria such as number of club members and attendances.

"I think we have known and the government have accepted it wouldn't be so equally split as in the English or German league. We need to grow without cutting out Real Madrid and Barcelona," said Tebas. "The better they go and the more stars they have, the better the domestic and international rights will go."

jh/ (AFP)