[John Robertson in the Chair] — Football Clubs (Governance)

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 9:30 am on 8 September 2010.

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Photo of Hugh Robertson Hugh Robertson Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) (Sport and the Olympics) 9:30, 8 September 2010

I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. However, it is only fair to say that Spain has an entirely different model for distributing television revenues from Britain. Spanish clubs negotiate TV rights individually and they go directly to Barcelona and Real Madrid, so the majority of TV rights and therefore the majority of TV money goes directly to those two big clubs, and the smaller clubs underneath them, which constitute the larger Spanish football family, suffer accordingly. By contrast, here there is collective negotiation for those TV rights, putting British clubs on a very different financial basis.