Spain: Judge validates offer of state-owned TV company, TVE, for TV rights to Champions League

The National Court, Spain's high legal authority, legally approved the awarding of TV rights to the state-owned TV company, TVE, for the 2012-2015 Champions League on 09/04/2014. The television company, Mediaset España, had challenged the awarding of rights in 2011, believing that TVE had violated the law prohibiting a public company to acquire rights of "high value" on the audiovisual market.

TVE pays €35m per matchday for the rights to feature premium fixtures of the Champions League. The Catalan public broadcaster, TV3, pays €5m for the rights to distribute matches exclusively to Catalonia. Canal+ Liga de Campeones, the pay-TV channel of the Prisa group, owns the rights to all other matches in the competition.

The National Court ruled that TVE did not overbid for the rights and thus complied with the statutory directives when the 2012-2015 rights were awarded to them after a second round of bidding was held by UEFA because the first round of bids were too low. Free private-TV channels, Telecinco (owned by Mediaset), Antena 3 and La Sexta had participated in the second round of…