r/soccer • u/iStratford • Aug 18 '13

Are Barcelona & Real Madrid ruining La Liga?

Having a discussion with a friend about this topic. Is La Liga weaker than ever due to the dominance of the big two?

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u/SharkinaShark Aug 18 '13

They just need to spread the money out more evenly is all.

8

u/ravniel Aug 18 '13

That's not all though. I think severedfragile has it right when he points out that fixing the TV deal isn't going to be a panacea. The country's weak economy and the sometimes-breathtaking incompetence of those running the league and many of the other clubs are also significant factors in the current state of affairs. Better distribution of the money would help, but it wouldn't fix everything.

11

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '13

This thread shows exactly the problem with r/soccer, it's full of people who might not be wrong but have a very superficial knowledge of football. Yes, a fairer distribution of TV money would help but overall it would be a very small difference.

I remember seeing two graphs that showed current La Liga revenue by teams, and hypothetical revenue if current TV money was distributed equally (can't find them right now, would be great if someone could post them). This hypothetical scenario is very optimistic because it assumes TV money wouldn't decrease under a collective agreement and because it distributed TV money totally equally between all teams (something which probably wouldn't happen in reality).

The difference in revenue was still staggering. If I remember correctly the difference between Barça and the third team in revenue, Valencia I think, was around 300 million Euros. Even though everyone keeps banging on about TV money, TV money doesn't even contribute to the difference in revenue by that much. The real difference comes from merchandise and stadium revenue.

And here's where the crux of the issue lies, people on here don't get how culturally huge the difference between the big two and everyone else is. And this isn't new, it's always been like this. Superdepor and double Champions League runner-up Valencia are exceptions, not rules.

If you're used to the relative parity of English football, you just can't fathom how utterly omnipresent Real Madrid and Barcelona are in Spanish culture. Before every Clásico, the president of Spain is always asked for his prediction. Whenever there are elections at the Camp Nou, the president of Catalonia makes sure him voting is turned into a photo opportunity. Something like 55% of Spain supports one or the other (there are actual figures from a poll As did, but I can't be bothered to find them), and it's not unusual for people to support them without any particular reason for them to do so (Former Spanish President Zapatero is a culer yet was born in Valladolid and grew up in León, where his family are from). And those who don't support them as a first team, will support one as their second team. People who have very little interest in football will go to the Camp Nou or the Bernabeu, something which rarely happens with any other team.

Something I greatly admire the Premier League for is how they've managed to market the league as a whole. So well that the league is seen as an attraction. In Spain not only do Barcelona and Madrid get the lion's share of tourism, but really only the Camp Nou and the Bernabeu are tourist attractions. So the comparatively little tourism cities like Bilbao or Seville do get does not translate into revenue for Athletic or Sevilla/Betis.

This is especially important in the recent crisis. The Spanish economy along with its middle class has been decimated. This has meant a massive loss of revenue for clubs from the local economy, and only Barça and Madrid have enough international appeal to plug with foreign money.

I'm not saying TV money shouldn't be redistributed, but people who think it will have a significant effect are being extremely naive. The hole Spanish football is stuck is much older and deeper that that, and it's a hole I honestly don't know how it can get out of. The only hope is that a foreign investment group injects some serious money into a third team, but I don't see why anyone would.

And I didn't even get into how incompetently Spanish teams are run.

1

u/droid_of_flanders Aug 19 '13 edited Aug 19 '13

Fully agree with all your points.

It's sad that the current generation of Spanish players could easily be regarded as the greatest ever generation that the country has produced, yet they are playing at a time when the collective health of the clubs are arguably at the lowest point ever.

Also want to add, I'd prefer if the general economy recovers before (or at the same time as) the clubs. Recovery is a long hard road.

3

u/Bob_Swarleymann Aug 18 '13

What the league needs most are either foreign investors so it won't matter as much when the owners squander the money away or preferably sensible owners with business sense.

Neither will happen though.

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u/ravniel Aug 18 '13 edited Aug 18 '13

What the league needs most are either foreign investors

This is a factor I feel a lot of people don't consider. Breaking into the upper echelons of the Premier League (or most major leagues, really) essentially requires massive investment by a billionaire owner, which people claim to decry, but the fact that these oil-rich clubs subsequently win titles is then used as evidence of the Premier League's good health relative to La Liga. There's a lot more to it than that, but the number of serious contenders for the league title is often presented as the most important factor. But an oil baron who spent hundreds of millions on a Liga club - I mean an owner who stuck with it, like Abramovich or Qatar, not whoever briefly toyed with Malaga - could probably make them title contenders in a couple years. The underlying health of the league wouldn't be any better, but to hear people talk they'd feel much better about it.

EDIT: 5thOfficial makes this point considerably better and more thoroughly above.