Tebas: "El Clásico won't be played in the United States"
LaLiga president, Javier Tebas, has come out in defence of his plan for the league to play a single match per season in North America
LaLiga chief, Javier Tebas, once again stressed the importance of expanding the league's brand on an international stage as it would open the door to more lucrative sponsorship deals for everyone. He said this after agreeing a deal which will see one domestic league game played abroad for the next 15 years in places such as the United States or China.
In fact one of the questions which has been floated about in recent days has been about the possibility of the biggest match of the Spanish calender, El Clasico, being played outside of the country.
However Tebas was quick to shoot down claims this might happen any time soon. "Logically, a 'Clasico' in New York isn't viable. At least, not a 'Clasico' in the league anyway."
Last Wednesday the footballers association (AFE) threatened to go on strike if the governing body didn't think about the players themselves when making these types of decisions, such as exporting the product to another continent.
Tebas wanted to defend his global strategy based on data. "In four years we've tripled the value of TV rights in international markets. We've risen by around 8% or 9% annually on each operation. The objective, however, isn't only this, but to increase the international sponsorship deals for all our teams. At the moment, there's only two which are really growing, Madrid and Barça, and one more recently in Atletico. There is work which needs to be done so that the deals for Valencia, Villarreal or Huesca continue to increase. Why not?" he asked.
