Plans to sell a percentage of Spain’s La Liga to CVC investment partners could see the creation of a new streaming platform if the deal goes ahead. El Confidencial reports that CVC plans to create a new platform to fully monetize the streaming rights to Spain’s top footballing competition, which currently sells for €1B per annum to Telefonica in a deal that runs until 2023.

The deal with CVC was agreed upon by La Liga bosses late last week and will be voted on by the member teams in the near future. It follows the collapse of plans for a Super League in Europe, a deal that was initially supported by some of the biggest teams in the sport before fan backlash convinced those involved to backtrack on their plans, as football’s top teams look to augment their incomes to mitigate the financial pressure COVID created on the game.

If agreed, CVC’s partnership with La Liga will see the clubs lose 10.95% of their "audiovisual" rights for the next 50 years in exchange for a slice of the €2.7B on the table from CVC, although there has been significant pushback on the terms from Spain’s biggest teams. Both Barcelona and Real Madrid have voiced their public dissent, and will presumably vote against when given the chance.

The move shows the growing power of streaming rights for sport's biggest events, with the Premier League selling a three-year package for £4.5B recently, which actually represented a $500M drop on the previous three-year cycle for the competition. With streaming rights to La Liga alone worth €1B, and TV viewing figures dropping in recent years traditional sport is increasingly being forced to embrace technologies that allow them to reach new, and crucially much younger viewers than had previously been the case.

CVC’s previous deal with Formula 1 lasted just a single year, with the company having a reputation for cash grabbing with little-to-no regard for the health of the sport within racing circles.