Spain: Mediapro wins football rights war
February 6, 2015
From David Del Valle in Madrid
Spanish media company Mediapro, operator of Gol TV, has beaten media group Prisa in their long-running dispute over football TV rights in the country.
The Supreme Court has exonerated Mediapro from paying €105 million to Prisa after overruling a previous decision taken by a lower Court which had ordered it to pay that amount for breach of the contracts signed in 2006 between both parties.
Now the Supreme Court has accepted Mediapro’s appeal on the grounds that the agreement between both companies is “null and void”. The war broke out when Prisa cut the signal to Mediapro clients in 2007 on the grounds that Mediapro was breaching the agreement by signing contracts directly with football clubs.
Mediapro will only have to pay Prisa €32 million for the season 2006-2007