Jaume Roures, the Trotskyist magnate at the head of the Mediapro empire

• Mediapro, which acquired Ligue 1 TV rights last year for the 2020-2024 period, announced a few days ago a partnership with TF1 for the broadcasting of matches.
• The big boss of this Spanish group, Jaume Roures, is becoming a central figure in the French football community.
• Imprisoned under Franco, left for a time in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas and a convinced Catalan, this businessman cultivates his networks as much as his discretion.

If ubiquity had a name, it would surely be called Jaume Roures. The boss of Mediapro, described on his official website as "one of the most important audiovisual groups in Europe", is at the head of an empire which leaves from Spain, is implanted in 26 countries and has just extended its borders to France where he acquired most of the Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 games over the 2020-24 period for 800 million euros. He has been trying for years to make a breakthrough in Serie A, but the determination of Sky Italia and the skepticism of the local authorities are holding him back for the moment. It will come eventually. Roures always ends up settling down. All over.

"We are serious," repeats the boss of Mediapro in front of the presidents of L1 via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/KI128lGg09

Mediapro publishes television channels, produces programs, series (including The Young Pope , with HBO), documentaries and films. Her perseverance even led her to befriend Woody Allen, even if it is also a chance work. The latter had to get carried away for one of his short films (Los lunes al sol ) in an interview, for the Catalan to come into contact with Allen, utter his admiration and, with a little bit of money, convince him to work alongside him. Three films are born from their collaboration, including Vicky Cristina Barcelona , pending a fourth to come, which will be filmed on the side of San Sebastian. And a few sweet words from Woody in Vanity Fair  : “It was a great experience, he runs a dynamic company that is extremely sensitive to the needs of the artist. It was a pleasure. "

Breakthrough in Spanish football

You don't become the strong man of soccer on TV and friend of a filmmaker renowned by chance. Count 100 hours of weekly work, a phone capable of absorbing overheating, a driver's license - he likes it and therefore does not have a driver - and a lot of guts. 1988. Roures has worked for five years for the new Catalan channel TV3, where he became director of production of news programs and then sports when he appeared before the president of La Liga at the time with his sidekick and today right arm, Tatxo Benet, to "buy the rights to football".

The boss of the Spanish League laughs but the urge to laugh soon passes. La Forta (Federation of Radio and Television Organizations of Autonomies), of which TV3 is a part, will end up styling the indestructible TVE and winning the rights of La Liga that same year. This year 1988 was prolific for Roures, since he also managed to negotiate the rights of FC Barcelona directly with the club. Strong.

Friendship with Cruyff

This is also where the idea of ​​Mediapro was born, which was born in April 1994 and whose launch will spark the fantasy of a financial contribution from Johan Cruyff to help his friend's box take off, this which Roures will qualify as a "hoax". The part about his friendship with the late flying Dutchman is however real. “It goes back to the time when we managed TV rights for FC Barcelona [for TV3]. One of my parents, a Barça supporter and youth coach, was in the terminally ill hospital. I asked Cruyff if he could go and see him and he didn't think twice about it, ”he says, defending himself from“ wanting a story to make us cry ”. No short stories.

If he can say the least about him, he does not hesitate. On his company's website, his name appears in the middle of a thousand others and his "bio" is of an evocative laconism. "He is an obscure character," says a Spanish journalist who prefers to keep his name quiet. His supporters say he is very loyal, his unscrupulous opponents. It is difficult to form a neutral opinion. All we know is that he has power. ”

The boss of Mediapro denounces “a sham” in favor of Canal + and beIN via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/tEfPd4IhQL

And that he can be convincing. When he landed last December 12 before the general assembly of the LFP to present his economic model for French football, not many people know what to think of the guy. Fulvio Luzi, president of Chambly (Ligue 2): “We were all a little skeptical before his intervention but in the end, everyone applauded him. It was a very informal one hour presentation, nothing enough to pass judgment on the man. We will see in the months and years to come. And we will see it on "Telefoot", the pay channel (around 25 euros per month) born of the newly announced partnership with TF1, available from August.

The football war

In the great history of Mediapro's influence, the years 2006 and 2007 are of capital importance. From a structural point of view, first, because this is where Roures develops a media empire anchored very to the left, as opposed to the centrist rival and then CEO of Prisa ( El Pais , among others), Juan Luis Cebrian. In 2006, the Zapatero government granted Roures, via a call for tenders, the sixth free analog television channel: Sexta - which it would eventually sell to Antena 3 while retaining a stake

Then, in 2007, he launched the newspaper Publico, of which only the digital version remains today - paper flew away in 2012 with the crisis - and where a certain Pablo Iglesias (Podemos) presented from 2016 to January 2020 an Otra vuelta killing program . A program that ended with an interview with… Jaume Roures himself (if you speak Spanish and have a good sofa, we recommend the video below.)

In the field of TV rights, then, this vintage marks the start of the "football war" against Prisa. Our source recounts the master stroke of the boss Mediapro. “Barça and Real signed in 2006 the most expensive television contracts in the history of football [1.1 billion euros over seven years for Real, 1 billion for Barça]. Overnight, they became the highest paid in the world on TV. All this is the work of Roures. But it also contributed to increasing inequalities within La Liga ”, at a time when Valencia and La Coruña were doing better than resisting the two behemoths.

The audiovisual group did not emerge unscathed from this conflict and went into insolvency in 2010, after having in particular been brought to justice by Prisa who accused the enemy group of having broken the rules by negotiating directly with the clubs. An alliance with beIN Sport will allow Mediapro to bounce back to acquire La Liga rights in 2015, when the rules of the game have changed: TV rights are now pooled under the impetus of the government and Javier Tebas, the boss of the League, and expensive individual negotiations out of play. "In a sense, he ended up correcting the situation by being an actor in a better redistribution of wealth," says the Spanish journalist.

Capitalist-Trotskyist, so what?

Jaume Roures is no longer a paradox. The powerful businessman who sells 53.5% of the audiovisual group Imagina (Mediapro) for a billion euros in 2018 and explains the same year as not, paying 25 euros per month for football on TV, this is is cheap, claims to be Trotskyist like at the first hour, that of the fight against the dictatorship and its seven passages in the Franco jails. Already little said, he sees himself decked out with a nickname commensurate with his melancholy - "Melan" - and takes advantage of stays between four walls to read and play chess.

Franco fallen, Spain will take the path of the parliamentary monarchy, hardly inspiring in the eyes of a Roures who crosses the Atlantic in search of a last shot of adrenaline in Nicaragua between 1978 and 1981, at the beginning of the Sandinista revolution , before returning to become a merciless negotiator. "But be careful," he told Liberation in 2009, "I don't work, I campaign. "Words followed by acts: he votes Podemos, whom he really envies a little (" they succeeded where we failed, by creating a vast social movement ", he will say to Les Echos ) and gets closer to the Catalan separatists.

"What are his real ideas? "

Mediapro goes so far as to produce in its premises a debate for the BBC in English between a member of the generality of Catalonia and another of the government before an audience committed to the cause of the former. To complete his work, Jaume Roures set up, on the evening of the referendum on the independence of Catalonia, on October 1, 2017, a press center to facilitate the dissemination of the results of the vote, which earned him consideration by the Guardia civil as a crucial element in the independence process. "Absurd," replied the interested party.

"I don't think he is a separatist," says our source. He is Catalan, but he is close to the nationalist left. »A last paradox for the road? “Roures has done business and signed contracts with people who are opposed to him, ideologically. Many of his socios are from the far right, including Tebas, to whom he is close. At first glance it is very contradictory. But what are his real ideas? There may be a difference between what Roures says he is and what he really is. "

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• Television
• Mediapro
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