Rosell: La Liga should be more competitive
Reuters - Tuesday 18 September 2012, 15:12
Barcelona want to seek ways to make La Liga more competitive so that other teams apart from themselves and Real Madrid have a chance of winning the title, president Sandro Rosell said on Tuesday.
Speaking to Reuters at an event in Brussels, Rosell agreed that a league in which the big two, the world's richest clubs by income, were not always so dominant would be more compelling.
"No no it's something I fully agree with," Rosell said when asked if it would not be better to follow the English Premier League model, where three or four teams scrap for the title and the top dogs slip up against lesser sides much more regularly.
"We have to sit down with the Spanish teams and look for solutions on that yes, I agree," he added.
One of the reasons for the dominance of Barca and Real in their domestic league is their stranglehold over income from audiovisual rights.
There is no system of collective bargaining and revenue sharing like in other European leagues and they take about half of the total pot of around 600 million euros.
Clubs like Atletico Madrid, Sevilla and Espanyol have been trying to persuade Barca and Real to share TV money more equitably and have even accused the big two of "stealing".
Rosell suggested Barca might be prepared to accept change, although club officials have made it clear in the past they would not be prepared to see their share of the pot shrink.
They have said they might, however, accept sharing some of the extra money that was negotiated with media companies in future deals.
"This is exactly one of the things we have to discuss with the rest of the clubs," Rosell said when asked about the television revenue issue.
"In fact we had some meetings in the past, last year, and as from 2014-15 we decided a new distribution of TV income for Spain," he added, without elaborating.
"So yes we are improving on that and probably in the future something will change."