Barcelona’s Lionel Messi celebrates winning La Liga with the trophy at Camp Nou, Barcelona, on April 27, 2019. (Reuters)
Spain’s football league, La Liga, announced on Thursday that their clubs had posted a record revenue of 4.479 billion euros ($5.01 billion) for the 2017-18 season.
The number marks a 20.6 percent growth from the previous campaign (3.6 billion euros) and therefore becomes the best in the competition’s history.
Crucially, it has not been bloated by a new TV deal given the figures come from the second of a three-year domestic cycle on audio-visual rights, which will come up for renewal in the 2019-20 season.
The current figure of audio-visual turnover surpassed the 1.5 billion euro mark for the first time in this set of financial results.
Commercial revenue - up 34.1 percent with a 838m euro turnover - and revenue from player transfers - up 104.3 to 1.02 billion - were the two main contributors to the league’s strong annual growth, with higher sums forecast next year.
La Liga’s professional structure means it produces an impact on Spain’s national GDP equivalent to almost 1.4 percent, employing 185,000 people both directly and indirectly with a tax contribution of more than 4 billion euros per year.
