ALDOFO BARA is La Liga's general director of sales and marketing. The league has prioritized expanding internationally in recent years, as evidenced by the opening of an office in the U.S. This initiative has also received a boost from foreign investments in several clubs, including Valencia, Atlético and Espanyol. Bara said that the LFP World Challenge will continue until at least '19. The project was initially launched in collaboration with the Spanish government, and that agreement expires this year. But Bara said that it will continue next year in a new format, with the funding to come from TV revenue. In the past two weeks, La Liga extended and expanded its partnership with Nike and announced a partnership with Tag Heuer. Bara said that the league will make an announcement with a digital partner in September. When asked to pinpoint one area La Liga is prioritizing above the rest, he said that China and the U.S. are the top two, and also called Southeast Asia and Latin America key markets.
His thoughts on the U.S. market, Asian investors' involvement with La Liga clubs and the Real Decreto -- which changed how TV revenue will be distributed going forward -- are below.
On La Liga's goals in the U.S. market ...
Adolfo Bara: The U.S. is a very key market for us when it comes to our global development. There are 55 million Latinos -- 80 percent of those are Mexican -- who obviously are mad about football. We want to make sure that we are talking to and targeting those people, as well as the Anglo-Saxon football players. We come from a very low profile in the U.S. because our TV platform, compared to the EPL platform, was not as good. We are working together with beIN Sports, which is our broadcaster, to increase and enhance our reach in the U.S. market when it comes to live football and television. With the growth of beIN Sports, I think they now reach more than 45 million households in the U.S., we're working together on this to increase that reach and obviously increase our audience in the market. The key things for our office in the U.S. are to work with the broadcaster to increase our audience, and No. 2: expand our football programs to talk to the kids at grassroots level, so when they think about football, they think about La Liga.
On the impact of Asian investors ...
Bara: There's two things. One, it brings financial stability to the clubs. And two, it also brings a sense of industry to our football teams. ... In the presentation that Espanyol did with its new Chinese president [CHEN YANSHENG], it's a different ballgame. This guy is a multi-millionaire from China, he wants return on investment, he wants to increase the profile of the team. The presidents talk to each other, so he talks to the guy from Valencia [Owner PETER LIM], they share with us the common strategies of growing their brand in Southeast Asia, so I think for us it's a great opportunity. Those investments, also with Atlético Madrid, are huge companies. They want to grow their business, they want to grow their assets, and obviously together we make it even bigger.
On the LFP World Challenge ...
Bara: The World Challenge was a very ambitious project that was put in place almost three years ago. The analysis that we have done from it shows that the good thing about it is that it has been very successful when it comes to being able to reach many different territories. We've played in Australia, Hong Kong, China, U.S., Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, all these different countries, so that has been very successful. Something that we have to improve going forward is to maximize the potential of the event, because we were very good the week of the event. But the buildup to it, like being able to promote it way in advance, engage with the broadcasters, with the local community and with the sponsors, that was not that good. What we're doing now is we're reshaping it for the future. We're going to continue playing games in our key markets globally, and we're going to work on making sure that whenever there's a game, three months in advance we communicate, we work with the sponsors and the broadcasters to increase the impact of the event.
On the impact of the Real Decreto ...
Bara: That's a very good question, and it's a question we have both internally and externally. The way we see it, obviously with the new money distribution when it comes to TV rights, all of the clubs have increased their revenues. ... For us, it's good that our two big teams, Real Madrid and Barcelona, keep growing and getting better. We need to compete both internally and externally. For us, it's paramount that the Ronaldos, Messis, Neymars and those big players come to play in Spain. ... And we're working with the clubs below them to make sure that they increase their competitiveness internally. But the reality is that our clubs that finish third, fourth and fifth, they win European titles. Like Sevilla has won the UEFA Cup [Europa League] three years in a row. ... The reality is that the two big teams are so big that they tend to eclipse everybody else. So the job we're doing is working with the broadcasters to push not only those two clubs, but also the rest of the games.
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