Spanish bank BBVA and the Spanish Football League (LFP) on Tuesday announced an extension of their agreement. The first league will continue to be known as Liga BBVA for another three years, renewable in '18. The agreement was announced in N.Y. by BBVA CEO Francisco Gonzalez and LFP President Javier Tebas. The investment is slightly more than €70M ($93M), €23.5M ($31.2M) per season. Gonzalez: "Renewing this sponsorship is a natural step for BBVA and it gives us great satisfaction. Since joining forces with the LFP in '06, we have come a long way in promoting Liga BBVA internationally. Our association with the LFP survived some of the worst moments of the crisis thanks to BBVA's strong position and the way we navigated the difficulties without aid, generating profit and maintaining dividends. Many sporting activities lost their sponsors but that didn't happen to Liga BBVA, which we are renewing today" (BBVA). In Barcelona, Carlos F. Marcote wrote that La Liga currently has a world audience of 800 million people in 189 countries. The sponsorship agreement is, however, far from the Premier League's with Barclays Bank, which invests €34M ($45.2M) per season (EL PERIODICO, 6/11).
