Real Madrid, Barcelona plan legal action as LaLiga clubs vote in favour of €2 billion CVC deal

Posted Saturday, December 11, 2021 by ESPN

LaLiga clubs have again voted in favour of the league's €2 billion investment deal with CVC despite ongoing opposition from Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, who have said they will take legal action to block the initiative.

The league's "Boost LaLiga'"project will see clubs receive funds to spend on infrastructure and modernisation -- as well as increased spending limits for transfers -- in exchange for handing 11% of LaLiga's revenue from TV rights to the investment fund CVC for the next 50 years.

The deal was approved on Friday, with 37 of Spain's 42 first and second division clubs voting in favour. Sources told ESPN that UD Ibiza had joined Madrid, Barca and Athletic in voting against, with another unnamed club abstaining.

The opposition of Madrid, Barca and Athletic saw them excluded from the terms of the initiative. While others will receive the first cash influx of €400 million in the coming weeks, those clubs will not, while retaining all of their TV rights income.

Despite that, the trio have continued to push against the deal, exchanging a series of angry open letters with LaLiga president Javier Tebas in recent weeks. Madrid, Barca and Athletic wrote to fellow clubs on Dec. 3 outlining an alternative proposal, which they called "Project Sustainable".

They said the arrangement would see clubs receive the same €2 billion sum as a 25-year joint loan from JP Morgan, Bank of America and HSBC, with an interest rate of between 2.5 and 3%.

The proposal was a "long-term, sustainable, rational and legal" alternative, they claimed, which would be 15 times more affordable if CVC's growth predictions were met. In response, LaLiga president Javier Tebas dismissed the offer as "an attempt to break the consensus and generate uncertainty."

On Tuesday, the three clubs published another open letter, sent to the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and Spain's National Sports Council (CSD), asking them to intervene and prevent what they called an "illegal" and "fraudulent" initiative.

The three clubs argued that a majority were pressured to accept the CVC deal due to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic and LaLiga's own strict spending limits and called for "structural reform of Spanish football."

The CSD called a meeting between the parties on Thursday in an attempt to broker a truce, but Madrid, Barca and Athletic refused to attend when it became clear that the organisation saw itself as an intermediary with no power to block the deal.