Telefonica and Orange, the two largest operators broadcasting football in Spain, could become the biggest victims of the creation of the Super League. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) supported the project it sponsored Real Madrid and Barcelona. Several clubs announced just over two years ago their intention to create a new football competition in which more than 70 clubs would take part. However, pressure from fans in several leagues has forced the great Premier Leagues, Italy or Atlético Madrid they decided delay your entry in this format.

This Thursday, the court approved the creation of the Super League. The body understands this UEFA has a monopoly on football. and that, like economic activity, which is the king of sports in Europe, it should have other directions so that it is not controlled by one institution. This is where Real Madrid and Barcelona know they are winners. So much so that a few hours after the decision was made, the competition organization presented what the project would be like.

One of the great new features will be that you will be able to see all the matches of each day openly and transparently. streaming. A milestone never seen before. True, in previous decades RTVE or Atresmedia They acquired the television rights to the Champions League, a competition currently under threat from the Super League. But these contracts only included two open matches (later reduced to one) per day, given that UEFA changed the rules of the game and major audiovisual platforms took over match broadcast packages. In Spain, Telefonica’s preference in recent years has been to buy them and secure a good customer base.

Orange and Vodafone, already out of the football rights orbit, joined the party and bought the rights in order to confront Spain’s largest operator and not lose customers to the detriment of Movistar. Today, both Telefonica and Orange are responsible for broadcasting the Champions League and La Liga, a competition that follows the Champions League model and requires you to sign up for the service (along with other fixed and mobile lines) to be able to see all the games. . Matches.

Basics for attracting clients

It is this area of ​​business that could affect Telefónica and Orange. Both companies insist that football is important to them. Converged customers, that is, those who enter into contracts for premium operator services (football, insurance, television and alarm), provide the greatest profitability to these companies.

Operator under supervision Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete It has over 4.5 million customers in this segment. According to the president in the presentation of the new strategic plan, the percentage that the telecommunications company intends to have this type of users is 50% through its portfolio. About 3.5 million people have a television at home. Orange, in turn, has about 3.9 million such users, and 1.2 million watch football and other television content at home.

The return of football is obvious for Movistar and Orange. For example, at times when users unsubscribe due to lack of competitions. For the quarter from June to September, ARPU (average revenue per customer) decreased slightly for this reason, as the company itself indicates in its results.

According to research carried out by Kantar TNS, seven in ten Spaniards who watch sports at home want football included in their basic channel package, and that 77% would change their payment platform if the one they subscribed to stopped offering LaLiga and Champions. League. And in the Telefonica region they know this well. When the company stopped broadcasting major sporting events, it lost 200,000 television subscribers.

Sources from the telecoms sector explain to the newspaper that “it is currently unthinkable for Orange and Movistar not to be involved in football, as their commercial commitments are tied to a premium customer.”

free tv

The Super League ensures that football is expensive. Very expensive. And that’s why younger customers aren’t paying for this content, and that needs to change. “Access to football matches has become prohibitively expensive in some cases. We are leaving a lot of fans behind. We want to change this. This is a unique opportunity to reimagine the way football is presented to fans and connect them with clubs and teams like never before. A22 – a company promoting the Super League) proposes to create a platform for streaming unified, which will be a meeting point for fans to share their passion, interact with clubs and players, find out the latest news and, most importantly, watch matches live for free.”

The new format manager aims to offer a platform where every match can be viewed. “Nothing is free and it can’t be done,” say representatives of the audiovisual sector. The same sources note that a significant portion of the revenue from major football competitions comes from television rights. At the moment, Super League has not commented on how it will compensate for this bill.

Many football fans are critical of the prices they have to pay to watch matches from home, which typically cost more than €100 a month. Operators such as Orange and Telefonica hide behind the theory that this amount is not only intended for monitoring the king of sports, but is also offered to him. Internet, television, landline and mobile phones.

A version that does not seem to be shared by football fans, who find in piracy a solution to pay less. Spain, together with France, leads illegal digital consumption in the European Union with figures of around 34%.

According to LaLiga, up to 58 illegal applications that users downloaded on Android mobile phones have been eliminated, with a total of 4 million downloads recorded worldwide, of which 800,000 were made in Spain to watch football. At Apple, this number was one million worldwide, of which 300,000 were in Spain. And all this does not take into account the famous IPTV (illegal decoders). An estimated 15% of homes have these devices connected to the TV.