Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid are set to take legal action against La Liga, after 37 of its 42 clubs voted through a €2bn (£1.7bn) partnership with private equity fund CVC Capital Partners.
The deal has been subject to public opposition from the trio of dissenters – second-tier Ibiza also voted it down, while one club abstained – who have all released a string of statements over the past few weeks.
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The Spanish Football Federation – who have long been engaged in a power struggle with La Liga -have sided with the rebels.
The agreement will see CVC invest a whopping €1.994bn in Spanish football in exchange for an 8.2% share in a company set to manage the league’s television rights for the next 50 years. The investors are expected to sell up within a decade.
Clubs will be able to access their share of the initial €400m installment in the next few weeks, with 70% allocated for infrastructure spending, 15% on servicing debt, and 15% on player signings.
However, The Guardian report that Barça and both Madrid clubs are readying a legal challenge to the deal. The trio have already appealed to the government’s sports’ council to intervene but they are willing to undertake legal proceedings if necessary.
The ‘big three’ of Spanish football are against the deal as they believe it is “mortgaging the clubs’ futures”, and they have instead put forward an alternative source of funding which they claim is far more financially sound.
Their complaints have been batted away by controversial La Liga president Javier Tebas, though. He pointed out that the financial backers of the trio’s alternative plans were the same as those proposed for the botched European Super League project – which Real and Barcelona remain committed to implementing.
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