Spain's Mediaabro chief executive, Jaume Rorys, believes that the era of spending football clubs hundreds of millions on the transfer market for contracting players is over, as television broadcasts go to reduce their investments in the game after the emerging crisis of the Corona virus.

Football activity has been suspended in most leagues and tournaments around the world since March due to the "Covid-19" outbreak, which led to huge losses for clubs due to their declining revenues from broadcasting rights and game tickets.

Mediapro finds itself primarily concerned with this, having acquired the largest share of broadcast rights for the first and second division matches of the French League for the next four years starting from the 2020-2021 season, with a record total deal of 1,153 billion euros (1.25 billion dollars). annually.

The Chinese-owned group has the rights to display LaLiga matches in bars and cafes in Spain, even though its contract as the official carrier of the league expired two years ago.

Networks such as Sky Sports and PT Sport, which own the rights to broadcast the English Premier League in the United Kingdom, and Sky Deutschland for the Bundesliga matches in Germany, will be watching with interest how MediPro performs the contract that comes into force in France in August. The group has not yet launched its channel for these matches.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Rouris stressed that the agreement concluded with the French clubs "will not change", but he expressed doubts about the amounts that the networks will be able to spend in future contracts.

"The sums spent on (buying) the rights have already reached their maximum in general," he said. "It is clear that TV broadcasting rights will be affected by this factor."

Reducing these sums is likely to cause severe repercussions for the clubs. For example, Barcelona, ​​Spain's richest club in the world, achieved 35 percent of its total revenue last season from television broadcasts, compared to 50 percent for Liverpool, European champions.

"The days when football clubs spend hundreds of millions of euros (to contract) the players are over ... because the clubs will run out of money and the banks will not lend clubs as easily as before," he said.

"All that will change and I think it is very positive. I have never agreed with the idea of ​​clubs spending 140 or 160 million (euros or dollars) to sign a player. It will be a positive thing for society in general and for the conditions of financial clubs in particular."

Catalonia-born Rauris believes that the prospect of Barcelona buying Brazilian star Neymar from Paris Saint-Germain, for example, is "now impossible ... simply, Barcelona does not have the economic power."

In the summer of 2017, Neymar became the most expensive player in the world after moving from the Catalan club to the French capital club for 222 million euros. Reports indicate months ago that the attacker wanted to return to wearing the colors of his former team.


- "Better viewership" -

With the matches currently suspended, some broadcasters have started to stop paying their payments, as the French "Canal Plus" and "Qatar Sport" networks that share the rights to broadcast the French League matches for the first and second tournaments have suspended the payments due to the League.

In the UK, Sky Sports allowed its customers to freeze their subscriptions.

Fears exist that fans will not keep or renew their expensive subscriptions, but Roures expressed confidence that the fans will be keen to pursue football again once the total closure restrictions currently in place to curb the "Covid-19" outbreak are lifted.

The 70-year-old Spaniard stressed that "the crisis will not keep people away from pursuing football. We may have to play behind closed doors, and restaurants and bars may be closed until a date we do not know, but people will need or rather want to pursue football as soon as possible ... At the moment, we don't see the need to change anything. "

At a time when the German club hopes to resume its activity next month, it is expected that the matches will be held in the major European leagues with the absence of fans for several months.

"I think that would be mandatory. But if you end the championships behind closed doors, you may not be able to go on Saturdays and Sundays. We usually play at the weekend because people are not at work and we can go to the stadiums, but this is not the case now. So we can adjust the program".

"TV turnout will be better because more people will be at home. Ultimately, football will remain the people's favorite sport," he added.