MUMBAI: Social media giant Facebook took several industry pundits by surprise when it acquired the India sub-continent rights for La Liga's 380 league matches for the new season, which commenced on Friday. It is now being reported that the league's broadcast in India will not just be limited to the social media platform, but will also be sub-licenced to a TV channel as well.
According to Mumbai Mirror, Facebook officials from Singapore and US apart from their Indian representatives are in advanced talks with a Mumbai-based sports television station to seal the deal for the same.
Given that Facebook does not charge consumers for the La Liga content, it remains to be seen how the broadcaster will air these matches.
Facebook currently streams the live matches for free to its 348 million users in the region, including 270 million in India. The company did not disclose how much it had paid to acquire the rights, which cost Sony Pictures Network $32m (€28m) the last time it was for sale in 2014. The Financial Times, however, quoted a sources suggesting that Facebook had shelled out something between €10 million and €20 million for the rights.
Facebook, which streams the matches on Facebook Watch, had opened the channels of negotiation with the television company for quite some time.
La Liga president Javier Tebas said, “We are delighted to team up with Facebook and be able to bring the action closer to all followers of La Liga in the Indian subcontinent.”
Facebook head of global live sports programming Peter Hutton said, “For Facebook, the deal is an important experiment." It has been trying to win broadcast rights in India to major sporting events including the Indian Premier League. "We see this as a great opportunity to bring people together around world-class football and also help La Liga reach new audiences.”
The season kicked off on Friday night with matches between Girona versus Vallodolid and Real Betis versus Levante. Although these are early days in India for the live online broadcast of the games, there is an opinion that Indian fans still prefer the big screen for live action. It could be a reason why Facebook is looking to sub-licence the rights to a broadcaster.
