SPAIN-MEDIA: More Than Sports at Stake in Digital TV Tussle

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Dec 30 1996 (IPS) - Digital television is about to take off in Spain and football clubs determined to join the revolution have engaged the government and opposition in noisy debate over control of the new medium.

Public and secret accords have been signed and broken and claims made about back-stabbing in the wake of the announcement on Christmas eve that two of Spain’s three large private media groups — Prisa and Zeta-Antena 3-TV — would build a digital platform based on contracts signed with football clubs to air their matches.

The government of centre-rightist Jose Maria Aznar — and the country — was taken by surprise at the Christmas eve deal.

Digital TV will be higher fidelity than today’s analogical form. It will permit transmission of up to 200 channels through one cable and in an interactive manner. Viewers will be able to choose from a wide variety of programming options and pay only for the ones they want.

No one knows how much money is involved in the full utilisation of this revolutionary technology. But for exclusive rights to broadcast the matches of the Professional Football League for five years, Prisa and Zeta-Antena 3-TV promised to pay the clubs 1.7 billion dollars.

It was precisely their accords with the major clubs that permitted Antonio Asensio, who controls Zeta-Antena 3-TV, to confront Jesus Polanco, majority partner in Prisa, earlier this year.

Prisa publishes the daily ‘El Pais’ and owns Canal Plus de Television, the only pay T.V. in Spain, as well as Spain’s leading radio station, SER.

The face-off reached a breaking point on Nov. 28, when Asensio signed an agreement to form a digital platform pushed by Telefonica, a public monopoly currently in the process of privatisation. Also signing the agreement were the public channel Television Española, Mexico’s Televisa, the publishing company of the daily ‘El Mundo’ and four regional public T.V. stations.

Everything seemed to indicate that Polanco would face serious business problems. ‘Canal Plus’ is Prisa’s biggest earner and a large number of its subscribers buy the service to watch League football, to which it holds exclusive rights.

Asensio’s main contribution to the Telefonica platform were his football contracts over which were pending judicial charges by Prisa.

When the two rivals announced their Christmas Eve pact, the government was outraged. Officials said they felt betrayed by Asensio who they had backed in his bid for a loan required to make good on his commitments with the clubs.

Representative of the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in the commission of parliamentary control on TV, Deputy Luis Alberto Aguiriano, expressed satisfaction with the Asensio- Polanco accord.

But ‘Tele5’ controlled by the ‘Grupo Correo’, the third of Spain’s large media groups, which is allied with Italian magnate Silvio Berlusconi, is demanding the formation of a single digital platform “without any dominant partner.”

Meanwhile, the government is trying to neutralise the Asensio- Polanco accord. It has decided to fight it on several fronts, ordering advisers to investigate whether or not there are monopolistic practices in the accords for televising football.

And the Superior Sports Council Friday launched an investigation into the shareholdings of football clubs to verify whether Asensio holds more than one percent of capital in two or more clubs — a well-known secret, according to the daily ‘El Mundo’.

If that is the case, the businessman would be breaking the law that establishes that no one person or entity can be in that position, a stipulation that seeks to avoid a deterioration in the sporting spirit of the clubs.

In the meantime, the two big digital options have begun their test broadcasting. Canal Plus is airing five channels through the European satellite Astra from Luxembourg, while Telefonica is airing 16 channles from Madrid through the Spanish satellite Hispasat.

What is really being disputed is a market set to expand mightily, as well as political power. Analysts say ‘Prisa’ has great power, sometimes decisive, in parliamentary elections.