In a given week, there are a number of events that take place to which I can only respond “you’ve got to be kidding me.” Late last week, one such event was LaLiga president Javier Tebas calling out Vinicius Junior, one of the biggest stars in world football and a headline player in his league, for doing something that plenty of people who love this sport have done and in all probability will continue to do.
Vinicius, out with a hamstring injury, was unavailable for Real Madrid when Los Blancos visited Liverpool in the Champions League on Wednesday; the holders sank to a 2-0 defeat that led to heavy criticism for Kylian Mbappe, expected to carry the side in Vinicius’ absence. But even while injured, Vinicius remained a magnet for controversy when he uploaded a still image of the broadcast… with a TNT Sports logo plastered in the upper right-hand corner.
It seems that Vinicius was watching the Brazilian feed of Liverpool-Real Madrid while in Spain – a big ‘no-no’ for Tebas, who insisted that if anyone is watching football in Spain, they have to do so using Movistar+, the telecommunications giant which owns the broadcast rights to LaLiga and the Champions League.
🗣️ Javier Tebas: “During the Liverpool vs Real Madrid game, Vinicius Jr put a picture on his Instagram watching it, and you can see the TNT Sports logo on his screen. This is PIRACY. When you’re in Spain, you have to watch UCL games through Movistar.” pic.twitter.com/eU8YdgkcSE
— Madrid Zone (@theMadridZone) November 29, 2024
Never mind that Vinicius might well have been watching the game legally through his Brazilian HBO Max account – calling out one of the league’s premier players is the latest escalation of Tebas’ personal fight against football piracy, which he has alleged costs LaLiga more than €600m per season. What Tebas doesn’t talk about is why fans and even players might be tempted to watch football on ‘pirated’ or ‘illegal’ streams.
On Saturday, Las Palmas won away at league leaders Barcelona for the first time in 50 years. And I bet a lot of people in Spain watching that 2-1 win for Diego Martinez’s men did so on a pirated feed, because the price of football is spiraling out of control and harming LaLiga’s growth in other territories.
Fans are motivated to watch pirated streams because the cost of Movistar’s football package runs in excess of €100 per month. Fans can watch the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, the Premier League, and the Portuguese Liga NOS for less – sometimes, far less – than they can watch LaLiga. It is absolutely wild that piracy has become a pet issue for Tebas when this (see below) is the breakdown for what it costs to watch the major European leagues domestically:
🤔 https://t.co/1wOCg4JNaB pic.twitter.com/jDZo2ZiPSR
— Archivo VAR (@ArchivoVAR) November 29, 2024
Inextricably tied to Tebas’ war against piracy is LaLiga’s social media presence, which inherently encourages fans to stump up the cash for the league’s product. Most Football España readers are aware that LaLiga goes against the grain of the other major football leagues in Europe by exercising total control (or at least attempting to) over the dissemination of its content, such as highlight clips and packages. Goals are rarely clipped, edited, and pushed out on Twitter/X, Instagram, etc. during an ongoing match; LaLiga normally will clip a player celebration before uploading a three-minute package to YouTube after the game, and during the week, it’s possible for the league’s social media team to clip the goals themselves, days after in-game interest has peaked.
Imagine LaLiga ever tweeting this, for example:
Liverpool fans chant “you’re getting sacked in the morning” to Pep Guardiola 🎶
Pep responds with six fingers, one for each Premier League title 😏#LIVMCI pic.twitter.com/T4UUmuaNax
— Premier League (@premierleague) December 1, 2024
If this sounds to you like LaLiga is scoring a massive own goal by taking these measures, you are absolutely right. Between intense control over its intellectual property, to refusing to stump up €3m to introduce much-needed goal-line technology, to racial abuse and fan violence at multiple grounds, Tebas is fighting the wrong battle – he is gatekeeping access to a league which recruited global superstars Mbappe and Julian Alvarez, who join Lamine Yamal in ushering in a new generation of stars playing in Spain.
It’s one of the more infuriating factors when following Tebas’ league, for at times it feels more his than yours, when the chief voice at LaLiga really has bigger things to worry about than the method by which fans of the league watched Antoine Griezmann score his magnificent goal for Atletico Madrid against Valladolid on Saturday night, or Oihan Sancet’s match-winning double at Rayo Vallecano, or Ladislav Krejci’s 97th-minute equaliser at Villarreal that blows the race for fourth spot wide open. For the first time in years, there is the potential for a three-way title fight atop the league, and the teams sitting fourth through eighth are separated by a mere four points entering December. Does the league really not care about its product?
🗣️ Javier Tebas: “During the Liverpool vs Real Madrid game, Vinicius Jr put a picture on his Instagram watching it, and you can see the TNT Sports logo on his screen.
This is piracy. When you’re in Spain, you have to watch UCL games through Movistar.” pic.twitter.com/OEaXtdP1wW
— Football Talk (@FootballTalkHQ) November 29, 2024
As a United States-based fan of and writer about LaLiga, there once was a time where it was extremely difficult to watch Primera week in and week out; that has become easier since ESPN acquired the U.S. rights to the league and put all 380 games on ESPN+. Granted, those games are locked behind a $12 (€11.42) per month paywall, and to stream Champions League fixtures, a $10 (€9.51) monthly subscription to Paramount+ is required. But it says a lot that the Spanish game is more affordable in a country where most everything else is overpriced amidst growing inflation, and where an incoming presidential administration has pledged to make commodities even more expensive.
We have to get people excited to watch LaLiga outside of its big two (or big three), but how can we when the league touts Movistar’s expensive package as the ‘only way’ to watch its game domestically? And overseas, is the administrative effort involved in hosting a Barcelona-Atletico Madrid match in Miami worth it? How can we envision such an undertaking when the league struggles to keep its own house?
