La Liga ordered to share 90-second match summaries

Spain's fair competition regulator on Monday ordered La Liga to give a 90 second summary of every game to every television station and allow free access to stadiums for channels.

The National Commission for Markets and Competition, or CNMC, decision followed a complaint by the Mediaset Spain broadcaster against the Professional Football League (LFP) over restrictions on media access to Spain's top flight games.

Spain's audiovisual law requires the television rights holder to provide a 90 second summary of sports events to other broadcasters. Stakes for football have risen because of the multi-billion euro television deals made for the league featuring the world's two best players, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The LFP, which sold free-to-air rights to the public TVE broadcaster, said this should mean one-and-a-half minutes on all games in a single day. Mediaset, which owns the Telecinco and Cuatro channels, argued there should be coverage of each game and refused to sign the LFP accreditation terms to get access to stadiums.  

Mediaset, a subsidiary of the media empire of Italian mogul Silvio Berlusconi, reported the case to the CNMC in September.

The CNMC ruling stressed "the unquestionable social relevance of professional sports" in Spain. But it said the rival channels could only show the clip twice in a 24 hour period.

The LFP has sold the rights for the 2016/17 to 2018/19 seasons for 2.95 billion euros ($3.25 billion).