Today we will focus on how the Spanish Sports industry is facing up the Covid-19 outbreak.
So far Spain is the second most hit country in the world behind Italy with more than 15 thousands of fatalities and government is taking more strict measures on the country. La Liga is now studying on how to finish the championship. But questions are many: How to take care of the budget for the next season? What happens with the agreed TV deals?
Jaume Roures, founder of the Spanish TV Broadcaster MediaPro, stated that, if the championship doesn’t find a solution in concluding, the losses due TV deals will increase up to 700 million euros. MediaPro contribution to the league is 800 million euros, with a contract till 2024.
La Liga’s table is seeing Barcelona on the top fighting with Real Madrid for the championship. With only 11 games remaining, there is still optimism on finishing the tournament over 2 months, between July and August. But as the time passes, the uncertainty about the future is still the same. In the meantime, FC Barcelona has already announced a cut of 70% of their players’ salaries in order to help all the employers of the club.
Meanwhile, the legendary stadium “Santiago Bernabeu” opens the gates for all the medical furniture that has been donated to the city of Madrid. The structure will be used as a warehouse for all this financial and material contributions which will be used by the Spanish ministry of health. On the other side of the city, Atletico Madrid launched the campaign “Lo Damos Todo”, with coach Diego Simeone, where funds have been raised to help the Capital’s Red Cross to copy against the tremendous epidemic of Coronavirus that put the city and the whole region of Madrid on its knees, since this is the most hit area of Spain. Simeone was quickly joined by the directors and players of the club, and the campaign is still growing attracting also music and movies celebrities. This initiative, accompanied by many others, are constantly involved inside the social media world as well as in the eGaming one where, for example, Denis Suarez, player of Celta Vigo, is donating medical supplies and food, of an amount of 60 thousand, to his hometown’s hospital by organizing charity tournaments on the game FIFA 20.
With the Olympics of Tokyo 2020 postponed, some Spanish athletes have to face the fact that they won’t be able to participate to what could be the highest moment of their career. Captain of Spanish Handball national team, Raul Entrerrios, is one of those. Entrerrios, aged 39, after missing the last Olympics of Rio 2016, was planning the retirement from the sport after Tokyo 2020. The man’s misfortune is only one many examples that happened to this category of athletes all around the world.
In response to this, the Superior Counsel of Sport, in collaboration with the Spanish agency of sports health protection, launched a new service that wants to help all these Spanish athletes who must deal with the trauma of this year’s postponement. A psychological training will have the priority to increase the well-being of this group of people and to show that institutions are tightened around them in this current period.
