Sogecable will continue to meet all of its contractual obligations in the transmission of live coverage from the Spanish football league, according to Ignacio Polanco, president of the pay-TV operator’s largest shareholder Prisa.
“There can be no doubt that D+ will continue to offer their subscribers all football matches, under identical conditions to those of the last season,” Polanco told Prisa’s annual shareholder meeting.
Polanco confirmed that Sogecable had yesterday (June 30) deposited €90 million as the downpayment for coverage of next season’s matches with Barcelona’s Court No 7. The court is handling the bankruptcy petition for the troubled sports rights broker Mediapro. Separately Sogecable has asked the administrators to assign the rights to its own Audiovisual Sport, which Prisa believes to be the legitimate holder.
“Sogecable has been, for many years, the chief funder of the League, and we only aspire to see that this is run in an orderly and consistent fashion, something that the Government and the Secretary of State for Sport, as well as the clubs themselves through the League of Professional Football, have a lot of room for improvement.” Polanco said that the situation had been created by a series of unnecessary interventions from the government that ran from the December 2004 decree on pay-TV through to the August 2009 ban on public broadcaster RTVE from carrying advertisements. It had, Polanco said, created a “formidable chaos” that harmed everyone involved.
