Revolution in the airwaves

Representatives of 18 Primera División clubs will meet at Sevilla's Sánchez Pizjuán stadium on Thursday to seek a way to force the Professional Football League (LFP) to agree to a more egalitarian distribution of television revenues. The meeting was called by Sevilla's firebrand president, José María del Nido, and 15 of his counterparts have confirmed their attendance. Real Madrid and Barcelona have not been invited to the summit.

The proposal that will be put forward at the meeting is that television revenues be negotiated collectively and not by individual clubs, as is the current case. The G-18, as the faction has been dubbed, wants the change to take effect immediately. "It's one matter that Real Madrid and Barcelona earn more, which is logical, but another that we are being robbed," an executive at Sevilla told EL PAÍS.

Del Nido confirmed that 15 clubs have agreed to send a representative, "besides the two clubs that are trying to boycott the meeting and asking other presidents not to attend." According to sources at Sevilla, Real has been active in trying to prevent the meeting from going ahead.

Del Nido did not give the identity of the two clubs that have not sided with the other 16, but Atlético and Valencia did not sign up to the breakaway group of six sides - Sevilla, Athletic, Villarreal, Real Sociedad, Espanyol and Zaragoza - that last year decided to collectively negotiate their deals from the 2015-16 season.

"The one who needs to be the flag-bearer for this movement is the biggest club of all of us involved, which by fan base and budget is Atlético Madrid. And Valencia has to follow suit. Sevilla doesn't want a leading role, we have 90 percent of soccer fans behind us," Del Nido said. "This is a ground-level revolution. We could compare it to the French Revolution, which had many spokespeople such as Voltaire and Rousseau at the outset and look how the king that ruled France ended up. There is no turning back. The club presidents cannot allow the end of the Spanish league because two clubs are very powerful; we are seeing the same thing every year. The only country in Europe that distributes television revenues in the way Spain does is Spain."

The rest of the teams in Primera signed an agreement last November that would see 34 percent of the revenue pot go to Real and Barcelona, 11 percent to Atlético and Valencia and 45 percent split evenly among the remainder of top-flight clubs.

The 22 teams in Segunda would reap 9 percent of the total and one percent would be set aside for parachute payments for relegated teams. Under the present system, Real and Barça coin around half of the 650 million europot between them.

Now, a number of clubs seem decided on joining Del Nido's revolution in the face of the top two's dominance.

"With this model, we simply ensure that the title is sold in advance," Del Nido said after the LFP meeting last November. At that time, Sevilla proposed an alternative system: 40 percent of television revenues would be shared equally; 20 percent would be divided according to league position from the previous season; 20 percent would depend on viewing figures and 20 percent by the size of each club, a factor governed by variables such as the size of the city the club resides in.

Del Nido said that he had been in contact with the presidents of the other interested parties and stated that "none of them are against the proposal." The television companies, he added, "do what the LFP tells them."

"If the clubs decide to negotiate collectively, the organism that we choose will carry it out and we will decide this together," the Sevilla president said.