Breaking America with Kylian Mbappe and Co: Why La Liga wants ...

The answer from Oscar Mayo Pardo, chief operating officer of Atletico Madrid, could not be delivered with greater clarity. He has been asked how La Liga might challenge the Premier League’s dominance when it comes to commercial and broadcast success within the United States.

“Play a match in the U.S.,” Mayo replies, instantly. Often, when European football executives are confronted by the contentious issue of taking competitive league matches outside of their home country, they deny, sidestep or obfuscate. Many within English football will discuss the matter privately but not go near the issue publicly, wary of setting off the latest tinderbox with their domestic supporters.

In Spain, however, there is no such caution. La Liga first tried to take a game between Barcelona and Girona to the U.S. in 2018, in tandem with the American media and events company Relevent Sports, but encountered opposition from the world governing body FIFA and the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Since then, Relevent, founded by Miami Dolphins owner and billionaire Stephen Ross, has battled in the courts to challenge FIFA’s position. Earlier this year, a strong signal was sent of a potential change in FIFA’s position. It announced its intention to review its policies and the expectation is that this will pave the way towards the possibility of competitive matches going on tour. Opposition may remain from the U.S. Soccer and MLS.

“The idea is to do it as soon as possible,” La Liga’s President Javier Tebas tells The Athletic.

“It does not depend only on us, but if we are able to do it, we will,” he continues. “I cannot put a timeframe but we are already working on it. The teams that take part will do so voluntarily. I will not decide it for them. We have to find a good date in the calendar, but we are going to try to do it in Miami, where we tried previously. We are not going to do a whole gameweek. It will be one game (per season) and that’s it.”

Atletico’s Mayo says his club want to be involved. “We would love to be one of the first two clubs in the history of European leagues to play (competitively) in the U.S.. La Liga knows we are totally available for that and, when it will be possible, it will be a pleasure for us.”

It is put to Mayo that the issue appears more controversial in England and Germany. How will fans in Spain respond?

“We have to explain it properly,” Mayo says. “When we see the NBA coming to Europe, we all say these people are smart and they know how marketing works. But when we try, it always is a little bit more difficult. But, as a club, being one of the first in the history to play a match in the U.S., we (would) have to be proud of this milestone.”

Tebas adds: “There are always going to be people against (an idea). We will to try to provide solutions to those who usually go to the stadium of the affected teams. We will try to be didactic in the explanations. We are talking about a single game, we are not talking about the entire competition. It is a single game among 380 in a season and it can help us maintain the economic level of our league.”

For Tebas and La Liga, North America is a priority market. The appeal is obvious. FIFA is bringing the World Cup to the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 2026, while its inaugural Club World Cup is slated for the U.S. in 2025. Tebas points out the exciting part for a business executive; the U.S. is a market of potentially 300million consumers and La Liga want a slice of it.

In 2018, La Liga partnered with Relevent in a joint venture to grow the league’s business in the region. Since then, Relevent has brokered an eight-year $1.4billion (£1.1bn) media rights deal with the ESPN+ streaming service in the U.S. and Canada, which allows the platform to stream all 380 La Liga games in both English and Spanish to an audience of over 25million subscribers. They also negotiated a $600m, eight-year contract with Televisa and Sky in Mexico and Central America.

These are by some distance La Liga’s largest international broadcast deals and the accessibility of ESPN+ is considerably stronger than their final days with previous rights holder BeIN Sport, where reach was diminished after BeIN found itself dropped from the channel line-ups of providers including AT&T/Direct TV and Comcast.

The joint venture has, Relevent says, been about more than simply opening up an office in New York or Miami, but rather about building a La Liga North America business, which they say was profitable by its third year and has generated $77million in revenues. Partnerships have been developed with blue chip brands such as Verizon, while McDonald’s has sponsored La Liga North America training camps in locations including Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas and New Jersey.

The joint venture, split 50-50 between La Liga and Relevent, has staff in New York City and Mexico City, as well as a content studio in Guadalajara, Mexico; its aim is to reach as vast an audience as possible via storytelling, sponsorship and cross-sport activations, such as when Fernando Torres, the former Atleti striker, announced the Miami Dolphins’ selection of Virginia wide receiver Malik Washington in the sixth round of the NFL Draft earlier this year.

ICYMI: Fernando Torres announced one of the Dolphins picks in the 2024 #NFLDraft last weekend! ⚽️????#TBT pic.twitter.com/GrfNmvWIgm

— Miami Dolphins UK (@Dolphins_UK) May 2, 2024

Tim Bunnell, ESPN’s senior vice president of programming and acquisition, says: “Part of the appeal of La Liga is its draw to the U.S. Hispanic audience, serving a critical fan base. But it is more broad than that. One of the questions I feel like I’ve answered a million times over the years is: ‘When is the sport broadly going to take off?’ It’s always been a big participation sport in the U.S. but, as far as media properties go, just kind of hit or miss.

“Some leagues are eminently reliable hits; La Liga is one of those. It’s not just targeted at the U.S. Hispanic audience. Players like Lionel Messi previously and now Kylian Mbappe are a draw whatever your language is, wherever you’re situated in the U.S..”

Despite La Liga’s considerable growth, its current television deal in the U.S. pales in comparison to the Premier League’s $450million-per-year contract with NBC. The question, therefore, is how does La Liga move closer, while also maintaining the healthy advantage it currently has over the Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1. The French top flight is currently heading into the 2024-25 season without any U.S. broadcaster at all.

Barca beat Madrid 2-1 in their summer friendly meeting (Photo by Ira L. Black-Corbis/Getty Images)

For the biggest Spanish clubs, there is no disguising the appetite or interest within the U.S; Real Madrid’s exhibition match against Barcelona at MetLife stadium in New Jersey this summer grossed $25million in ticket sales alone according to sources briefed on the matter — who asked to remain anonymous because the numbers are commercially sensitive.

The size and popularity of the big two may be deemed a blessing or a curse: a blessing because La Liga possesses two of the largest sporting brands on the planet, but a curse because they so dramatically outweigh the interest of many other clubs within the league.

In recent years, Atletico have inched closer. This week, when they signed Julian Alvarez from Manchester City for £81.5million, the announcement was timed so as to hit the late morning and lunchtime in the U.S. and his native Argentina. “Not a coincidence,’ Mayo says. “The U.S. is the second market for us after Spain, in terms of merchandising and where we sell the most shirts, even more than in France, from where we have important players such as Antoine Griezmann.”

???? ¡La araña es rojiblanca! ❤???? pic.twitter.com/t5VdXHkSlu

— Atlético de Madrid (@Atleti) August 12, 2024

Next summer, Atletico will be one of two Spanish teams, along with Real Madrid, to compete in the Club World Cup. FIFA is yet to announce venues, a broadcaster or sponsors, but Atleti, Mayo says, view this as a potential breakthrough moment for their standing in the U.S.

That confidence reflects a rediscovered optimism coursing through La Liga. For a long time, the league appeared to be defined by duopoly: Real Madrid vs Barcelona; Cristiano Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi. Then Ronaldo departed Spanish football in 2018 and Messi followed in 2021.

In September 2021, FourFourTwo magazine ran a spread entitled The Death of La Liga. It lamented the loss of star names and pointed out how, between 2018 and 2021, La Liga did not have a representative in a Champions League final. It warned that the Premier League had overtaken the Spanish top-flight in UEFA co-efficient rankings. Even last summer, La Liga was the sixth highest-spending league in world football, behind the Premier League, Ligue 1, the Saudi Pro League, the Bundesliga and Serie A. The league’s co-efficient ranking has dropped to third place, falling behind Serie A. The Premier League is top.

This summer, spending across the division will once again be measured — part of the league’s drive, encouraged by Tebas, for greater sustainability. Yet the picture for Spanish football all of a sudden looks rosier. Its men’s national teams won the European Championship and Olympic gold this summer, while last year its women’s team won the World Cup.

ESPN’s Bunnell says: “There’s a bit of a halo there. Spain, in the public mind of the U.S, is at the top of the pyramid in soccer right now.”

Real Madrid have won two of the past three Champions League finals and they and Barcelona have won seven of the past eleven Champions Leagues between them. Nine of the past fifteen Europa League trophies have been won by Spanish clubs, with Atletico Madrid, Sevilla and Villarreal sharing those.

This summer, there is also a sense of La Liga’s star power re-emerging: Barcelona have breakout stars in Lamine Yamal and Pedri, as well as new signing Dani Olmo; Real Madrid have landed Mbappe to go along with Jude Bellingham and Vinicius Junior; while Atletico Madrid have just spent big on Alvarez, Argentina’s starting centre-forward at the World Cup and Copa America. There are signs of strength outside the elite, too: Athletic Bilbao have kept Nico Williams and Real Sociedad persuaded Martin Zubimendi to reject Liverpool.

This brings opportunity. Boris Gartner, the CEO of La Liga North America and the president and partner of Relevent Sports, says: “This is a society that circles around individuals and heroes. And how we leverage those and tell those stories around specific heroes is going to be a big part of what we do day in and day out.”

Tebas is more cautious about the need for ready-made stars. He points out that the Premier League, the most commercially successful football league in the world, has not had a Ballon d’Or winner since 2008, when Cristiano Ronaldo played for Manchester United.

“The American market is mature and it knows that stars will emerge in La Liga,” he says. “Vinicius Jr has become a star playing in Spain. Griezmann, the same — firstly at Real Sociedad, then at Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. The majority of the Spain squad that won the Euros play in La Liga and many of them are not at Real Madrid or Barcelona. Messi and Ronaldo left a few years ago now. And we continued being where we are. We have not fallen in value and we keep growing our following.”

Gartner adds: “When Messi left, we were actually in the middle of doing the new deal with ESPN, but the value of the rights was never affected. It was never a discussion of, ‘Now Messi is not in, you should get paid X per cent less’. The general positioning has been that La Liga and specifically Real Madrid and Barcelona will always attract stars and people understand that there are cycles to that.

“You see it on the other side, with the MLS leveraging Messi everywhere they can because when you’re starting from a low base that big star will give you a big lift. But when you’re starting from a higher base with La Liga and you lose that star, the negative impact is not as significant as the other way around.”

Part of the challenge for La Liga North America is to tell the stories of clubs beyond the rich and famous. Girona, who last season launched a surprise title challenge, grabbed the attention of the U.S. audience last season. Average viewership for their games was only behind the two Madrid sides and Barcelona.

“What we’re trying to do here is grow the value of the overall league,” Gartner says. “We are conscious the drivers are Real Madrid and Barcelona. But here is an example of how we tackle it.

“We know if we do a content piece on Real Madrid or Mbappe, it’s going to get X number of views. What we do is really try to understand the other 10 stories that we can tell that might not have the same impact, but when you add them up, are probably getting to that same reach and, at the same time, you’re actually building a community.

“So are we talking about the Mexican players in La Liga and then tying it back to the communities here? Do we try to tell stories around a connection with Ilia Topuria, the UFC Georgian-Spanish fighter and La Liga? But we’re not shying away from putting front and centre Real Madrid and Barcelona. That would be a mistake. We have the two most popular teams in the world. They are assets from a content and a commercial perspective.”

The battle for commercial spend on sport has rarely been more competitive. The market is devilishly saturated. This summer, for example, a U.S. brand might have spent money on Copa America, Olympic athletes, pre-season exhibition matches, as well as committing to North American sports competitions such as MLB, NFL, NHL, MLS, NWSL, NBA or WNBA.

Patrick Lowe, La Liga North America’s head of partnerships, says: “It is not just sport-related. It’s also a battle for people’s time, entertainment and awareness. If you had to say who are the two or three properties that we come up against the most, in terms of fighting to differentiate, it can be local MLS clubs, because sometimes you’ll have a brand who say we only have three key territories, so let’s do three local deals. But it does not stop there. It is every league you mention.”

They aim to attract around $10million per year in the North American market through sponsorship. Lowe says his team show a slide to sponsors that portrays La Liga as the home of the “best”. This was aided when Real Madrid pair Luka Modric (2018) and Karim Benzema (2022) won the Ballon d’Or after first Ronaldo and then Messi departed Spain.

In recent seasons, La Liga’s reputation has been impacted by the racist abuse endured by players including Vinicius Jr.. The Real Madrid player alone has been abused at more than 10 Spanish stadiums in the past two years. Have sponsors expressed concerns within the U.S.?

Lowe says: “When these incidents specifically happened, we proactively went out to all of our partners and broadcast sponsors and said, ‘This is going on, this is what La Liga has been doing for X number of years’. And clearly, it’s not enough. Clearly more needs to be done. We were reassuring them that we understood the nuances of the issue for the market. That is a priority for us, not just beyond what the league is doing to address it, but for us to make sure that they feel comfortable with the steps that we’re taking. And they mostly appreciated the fact that we were not waiting for somebody to reach out to us.”

There is a separation between church and state when it comes to leagues and their broadcasters but ESPN’s Bunnell says the network “feel like they (La Liga) are taking care of it”. He added: “Whatever steps we can take to make sure that it does not creep into the DNA of the league, we obviously are behind that.”

ESPN, too, are supportive of bringing U.S. fans closer to the action by taking a La Liga game stateside.

“Our feeling is the property is so important to us and of such stature that we’ll cover them wherever they are,” Bunnell adds. “If they want to play on Jupiter, we’ll do that too. Every time we can have a match locally, it benefits us. We would love to have a regular season game here, but we don’t influence them at all — it is up to them.”

Would a U.S. game just be the start of a global roadshow? Tebas stresses the need for a market to send the signal of interest, as the U.S. has to La Liga.

Atleti’s Mayo concludes: “The U.S. is our second-biggest market. The World Cup is coming. It’s an industry of entertainment. Football is growing. So to me, in the next five years, the market is the U.S.”

(Top photo: Antonio Villalba/Real Madrid via Getty Images)