“It was a disaster, our work got even worse” | Relief
In mid-1989, an important meeting takes place in Barcelona. It includes TVE director Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas, program director Juan Manuel Martín de Blas, director of sports for Catalonia Sergio Gil and deputy director of sports programs Fernando Ors. For the first time, the possibility of football leaving public education is real. There are certain concerns, regional television channels are beginning to appear, and private television channels are expected on the near horizon. Suddenly, things became difficult for a corporation unaccustomed to competition.
“We spent almost the entire night analyzing purchasing opportunities. We came to the conclusion that we need to buy it.. It was very expensive, I think it was a billion pesetas, I kept that figure, but we thought it was the public because football doesn’t make money, it doesn’t generate advertising and you can’t pay for it, but it was very expensive . really provides an audience. Cortés-Cavanillas agreed and said he would inform the CEO,” explains Ors, one of those present.
“The fact is that when we returned to Madrid, we discovered that the sporting director, Julio Bernaldez, had spoken to the general director and made a deal not to give up football. Luis Solana said no to football“, explains TVE’s historical journalist. The surprise was huge, even more than that, it was a deep disappointment.
“I wanted to go home, I was going to devote myself to something else, because this couldn’t happen, you work for one thing and don’t see the point in it.”What happened, this house is a joke, are you working for someone?“says Sergio Gil, another of those present at the meeting and who, just a few months later, would have to manage the accident when he was appointed head of the organization’s sports division. If you need to look for someone in charge, the answer is simple: “The main problem of Spanish television has always been Moncloa.whoever it is.”
Now is a good time to explain some concepts that have sounded like ancient history over the years but were key at the time. TVE was the only network, so it practically set the prices for football. Teams didn’t even really like having their games shown, fearing that television might cost them box office revenue, which had previously been their main source of income. After the 1982 World Cup there were significant expenses and the clubs found themselves in debt. The problem was multifactorial.
Before this, football was shown on TVE on Saturdays at 20:00. Voice of José Angel de la Casa. “There wasn’t the sophistication that there is now, The matches were played with seven cameras, more or less, just like the Madrid-Barcelona match had more.. A few days before, the broadcast team went to work on what we called the area where the cameras were installed… Jose Angel was there, and then some technical commentator who changed depending on the games,” notes Gil.
Saturday was a celebration of sports on television, the game being the cherry on top of a very varied sports menu: “We had a program called Stadium 2 that started on Saturday at noon.“and it was a program that showed league, English football, tennis, golf, athletics, swimming, gymnastics… a whole range of sports that unfortunately aren’t shown on open television today,” says a former Sports executive .
Arrival of Dorna
The television landscape began to change, and some saw this angst as a way to make money. Such is the case with Dorna, a company that was to become the key to understanding the sport in Spain. “They started out as an agency doing static advertising for football fields., they carried a rotating advertisement that went around in a circle. There they started to grow because they implemented this system not only in football, but also in other sports, I even matched with them in a meeting with the NBA. They grew so much that they skyrocketed and began to buy rights from clubs and dive deeper into football,” Gil recalls.
“What I remember is that there was a competition and we were the best, the ones who offered the most,” says Carlos García Pardo, one of the founders of the company that would become key to understanding the rights boom in Spanish football. “We thought we would put this product on any TV, La Forte or Spanish, or even the private ones that came out later.“Remembers the leader of Dorna. This was undoubtedly beneficial.
“All football requires a lot of money. Starting with Real Madrid, which asks for a lot of money, Barça too. And Barça, for example, negotiated with TV3 behind the back of Spanish television. These were semi-political agreements, TV3 paid Barça what is not written in the books.“, comments Ors. This new competitor was headed by the chain’s production manager, Jaume Rures, who later left the Catalan civil service and worked extensively with Dorna. Barcelona found a great opportunity in the regional civil service. Years later, the club would take off and win four leagues, including number Dream Team from Cruyff there is also something from TV3.
“Administrations are different, and there are governments that need to invest and that need television that advocates their policies, and there is another government that has already standardized television. Convergence’s new toy at the time was TV3. It was a great toy for them, and whatever was needed, football was a hook to get an audience and use it to attract attention to other types of programs.they were very interested, and we were at a complete disadvantage,” explains Sergio Gil.
Club business
“The clubs were all a little unpresentable, they behaved a little like bandits.“, explains Ors. Here there is a voice that disagrees, it is the voice of Tony Fidalgo, general secretary of the LFP, what La Liga is today: “We went from being given games on TVE, first without charging a fee, then charging fee from four bitches. “Well, other television stations and companies like Dorna started, the decision was made by the executive committee, and then we presented it to the First and Second Division assemblies and they agreed on the amounts and so on…”
The amounts were not yet what they would be later, but it was certainly a huge leap forward. “We had to negotiate with the clubs, because everyone had their own stories, their own problems.and everyone wanted something more, and some were more difficult and some were less,” explains Gil.
Gil, who was present at the meeting in question, was appointed head of the sports department in September 1990. He had to rebuild the house in accordance with the new reality: “I had two very specific tasks: one urgent and the other medium-term. football had to be played. There were negotiations with regional television channels, and we reached an agreement on broadcasting in areas where there were no regional networks. This was the medium-term perspective. We had information that UEFA was talking about changing the European Cup and the Champions League would begin in 92-93. We were not taken by surprise there. and the new CEO Jordi García Candão said that we should go after them, because we have had the Champions League for many years.”
For TVE the situation was never the same again, everything became more complicated. “Our work has gotten significantly worse, there is no doubt about it.. It was a disaster for TVE, as any sane person will tell you,” says Fernando Ors.