Negotiations between Spanish telcos and Mediapro over European football TV rights have been put on hold following the launch this week of the auction for La Liga TV rights.

The telcos now have until June 25th to submit their bids for the National Football Championship over the next three seasons. All are now focused on La Liga rights, relegating the negotiations with Mediapro, owner of the UEFA TV rights, for the time being.

This is a setback for Mediapro, reports El Español. The time to reach an agreement with the operators will significantly be reduced as the UEFA competition will start in September and the operators will not be ready for negotiation until July at the earliest.

This will also oblige Mediapro to make a generous bid for La Liga rights in order to win and resell them to the operators in a joint package with the UEFA rights. The company has previously done this when it sold the joint package to Telefónica for €2.4 billion.

Telefónica, Orange, Vodafone and other possible bidders, including Amazon or even Facebook, will now be focus on La Liga rights this month, with all of them currently refusing to pay the €1.3 billion per season that La Liga is asking.

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