New TV deal leads to soaring demand for legal services among Spanish football clubs – BDO Abogados

The lucrative TV broadcasting deal that the Spanish Football League announced in early 2016 has led to an increase in demand for sports-related legal advice as clubs become more professional in the way they are structured.

The €2.65bn deal ensures that Telefonica subsidiary Movistar, along with Mediapro, will share the domestic TV rights for La Liga in Spain until the end of the 2018-2019 season.
“With the new money coming, the clubs need to be more professional because they have to manage more issues,” says Ignacio Legido, managing partner at BDO Abogados. “We see that they are asking about technology, they’re also worried about data, about e-commerce, and they also ask about the possibility of moving their business into other areas.”
The most successful law firms will be those that can integrate traditional sports law advice with the much larger commercial demands of the newly-enriched football clubs. “We have to work hard and have people ready to provide them with the advice on technology and other areas that all these clubs – with all the new money coming and with the new professionals around them – will need in future years,” says Legido. “They need a law firm that can offer them not just sports law advice, but support on everything.”
“In the end, a club is a company,” Legido adds. “They are worried about who is the auditor, they are worried about following the tax rules and the sports rules – the client understands that football, and sport in general, is a business and they try to be more professional. They ask the typical questions you find when you are with a normal client, but you also have to be specialised so that you can advise them on sports matters.”