Spain’s La Liga strikes deal to play regular-season fixture in USA as part of international expansion
0 Atletico’s Diego Costa, left, and Sergio Ramos of Real Madrid in midweek action in the Uefa Super Cup, which was played in Estonia. A regular-season top-flight Spanish league game is set to be played in the United States, possibly as early as this year, but it is unlikely to be an “El Clasico” between Real Madrid and Barcelona.
La Liga said yesterday it is planning to play a match across the Atlantic as part of a new 15-year partnership with sports and entertainment group Relevent to promote football in North America.
The group operates the International Champions Cup, the world’s largest summer club tournament. Barcelona and Real Madrid faced each other in the tournament in Miami last year.
The league gave few details on the planned regular-season game. La Liga president Javier Tebas, however, dismissed the possibility of taking El Clasico away from Spain.
The league said it is still making arrangements for the game and there is no timetable for when it will happen, but it could be this season.
La Liga has been trying to expand internationally for some time, hoping to grow and keep pace with the powerful English Premier League.
Tebas last year also talked about the league possibly playing a regular-season match in China, and a few days ago the Spanish Super Cup was held in Tangier, Morocco, marking the first time it was played outside Spain. The league game in the US would be the first to be played outside of Europe.
“Joining with Relevent to create La Liga North America is a major milestone in our international expansion strategy,” Oscar Mayo, the league’s international development director, said in a statement. “This agreement ensures not only a bright future for soccer in North America, but also for La Liga and our clubs.”
The league said “the operation will support the league’s growth in the US and Canada through consumer related activities including youth academies, development of
OSCAR MAYO youth football coaches, marketing agreements, consumer activations, exhibition matches and plans to have an official La Liga Santander match played in the US.”
A decade ago, the Premier League tried to introduce an additional international match but plans for each team to play a 39th game overseas were abandoned amid opposition from Fifa and fan groups.
The Premier League has more exposure than its Spanish counterpart in the US, in part because of a six-year TV deal with NBC worth about $1 billion.
Since 2012, the Spanish league has been on BEIN Sports, which was received by less than a quarter of American English-language television households even before it recently was dropped by the Comcast Xfinity cable system.
“This agreement ensures not only a bright future for soccer in North America, but also for La Liga and our clubs”